


But I'll Be Yours If You'll Be Mine

by MaryPSue



Category: Guardians of Childhood - William Joyce, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: 8000 Blacksand AUs, Ficlet Collection, M/M, fourth book what fourth book
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-17
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-03-07 21:17:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 46
Words: 48,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3183503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryPSue/pseuds/MaryPSue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of short blacksand fic and ficlets originally posted to tumblr. Includes Blacksand Week challenges, multiple AUs, three-sentence fics, and a whole whack of pretentious poetic language.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Here is a fact:

Gold is the only metal that does not tarnish. It can be buried for centuries, even millennia, but when you dig it up and brush off the dirt it will gleam as brightly as the day it was buried.

…

The Constellations are not prepared, not after they thought their hard-fought war at last so dearly won. Darkness sweeps across planets and puts out a wide swath of stars before the Golden Army can once again be mobilized, too late, too late.

…

Here is a fact:

The light of stars that we see in the night sky is millions of years old. Most of the stars we can see are already long dead.

…

Earth’s astronomers are startled to record a strange event: thousands – no, _hundreds_ of thousands – of stars extinguished at once, their last flares of desperate light reaching the little blue backwater planet at last. There seems to be no logical explanation for the extinction.

The Tsar Lunar sees it first, and turns away from the fall of his world, beaming the more brightly down on the lonely planet he has grown to love.

The mermaids notice that their once-a-star Sandman watches the death of each of his brethren with sad eyes. They have no way of knowing, and he does not tell them, that this is the second time he has had to watch.

Pitch Black glances up at the gaping blankness in the night sky, and feels a pang of familiarity, a stirring of the old festering madness in the dark that fills him, shapes him. He watches, transfixed, as the stars flicker out, wondering if the hollow within him should be filled with pride or regret.

…

Here is a fact:

The shadow of glass is filled with light. A dim glow at the intersection of dark and dark, light at the heart of shadow where it should be deepest.

…

The youngest Guardian asks why Sandy hasn’t been around much of late. The only real answer he gets comes from Bunny, who has over the centuries shed parts of his name like old skin.

“But something could have happened to him – we still don’t know what Pitch’s arrow really _did,_ and -”

“Frostbite.” Bunny sighs deeply, and for an instant the weight of immeasurable age seems to settle on him like sediment, fossilizing him in time. “How much do you know about the Golden Age?”

…

Here is a fact:

We are all made up of matter that once made up the stars.

…

Pitch is not lurking. He is standing, proud as ever, in the shadow of a church steeple, hands clasped behind his back and face upturned to the brilliant moon and the void beyond. His expression is unreadable, and shifts only imperceptibly when the golden glow of dreamsand falls upon his face. Sandy can’t tell for certain, but he thinks he sees the faintest trace of something like loss.

For a moment, Pitch looks as though he’s about to speak, but thinks better of it. He turns his face away from Sandy, but makes no move to send the little dreamweaver away. Sandy, in turn, settles his cloud into place next to Pitch, close enough to reach out and touch. Neither of them do. The space between them is wider and colder and more void than the sky without stars.

Together, they watch silently as the last remnants of the Golden Age flare out overhead.

…

~~Here is a fact:~~

~~I miss you.~~


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a birthday gift for [gretchensinister](gretchensinister.tumblr.com).

Sandy claims it’s his birthday.

Pitch stares impassively at the series of images that depict a cake bedecked with flickering candles, an envelope that opens to reveal a card, a stack of beautifully-wrapped gifts, and finally a giant arrow pointing to the Sandman himself, who, Pitch notices, is wearing a conical dreamsand party hat. Sandy blows on a sparkling noisemaker, which unfurls without a sound, and golden-sand confetti rains down around the two of them.

Pitch raises one hairless brow at the spectacle. “What are you talking about, old man? You know we don’t have birthdays.”

Sandy frowns with a silent huff, and waves his hands. The cake reappears in front of him, the three glittering candles atop it exaggerated in size. Sandy leans over and, pointedly, blows softly on the vision, cheeks puffing out, and the candles gutter out one by one. He turns a hopeful look up on Pitch, who shakes his head.

“If you wanted sweets, you only had to ask,” Pitch says, and the cake dissolves into a frustrated swirl, candles and all. Sandy levels a glare at his dark counterpart, who is beginning to wonder just how long it will take before the little Sandman pins him against the wall and shows Pitch exactly what it is he wants.

Again the candles, again the guttering flames. Pitch trawls through his limited memory of human birthday traditions. He isn’t often present at birthday parties – at least, apart from those where several children spend the night, and then they’ve usually already dispensed with the cake and presents and whatever other traditions they might engage in by the time his presence is required – and his knowledge in that area is, sadly, lacking. “I don’t know, old man,” he admits grudgingly.

Sandy rolls his eyes thoughtfully, before his face lights up with a sudden inspiration. He points up, and the simple shape of a five-pointed star forms over his head. It twinkles once, then darts forward in a flash, leaving a long trail of gold behind it before it bursts into sand again, leaving Pitch no less baffled than before.

“I know what you are, if that’s what you’re trying to get at.” Pitch runs a hand through his hair, disguising his frustration. This would be so much easier if Sandy would just _speak_ , but of course the little man hasn’t done that in centuries. Millennia, even. Pitch has lost track. “What does being a wishing star have to do with -”

He stops. “That’s it, isn’t it? You’re pretending it’s your birthday because you want a wish?”

Sandy clasps his hands together and smiles his very sweetest smile. Pitch is not fooled in the slightest.

“Just what is it that you want, that you feel you have to go to such great lengths to convince me to give it to you?” His suspicion deepens, and he scowls. “If you’re going to ask me to join your band of goody-two-shoes again, my answer remains the same. And I don’t think your friends would be very glad to see me either, after -”

Sandy shakes his head vigourously, colouring a startling orange. Pitch doesn’t have long to ponder what has made the little dreamweaver so embarrassed before Sandy starts signing furiously again, looking hopefully up at Pitch as the images grow increasingly explicit. Pitch has to laugh when it finally clicks into place. This particular tradition is one he _is_ familiar with (although not personally).

“Birthday blowjobs? Really, Sanderson, that’s positively tame compared to your usual requests.”

Sandy shakes his head, pressing one small hand to his forehead in clear exasperation.

“Well, if I’m that far off the mark, you’re going to have to come right out and _tell_ me what it is you want. Much as I enjoy your company, I can’t afford to spend the next decade standing here playing charades.”

This earns him the dirtiest look Pitch has ever seen on Sandy’s round face. Thankfully, it also encourages Sandy to stop beating around the bush. It takes Pitch a moment to unravel the next set of symbols, and when he thinks he has an idea of what Sandy’s asking, he repeats it loud. Just to be sure.

“You want to try something, well, that much is obvious, but – what? Of course I remember the time you asked me to play at being the monster to your naive innocent.” He quickly tamps down the smile that threatens to overtake his face at the thought. “Wait. You’ve asked me already to roleplay with you; what’s so different about this time that you feel you need to go to such extremes to convince me?”

The answer leaves Pitch’s mouth as dry as much as the tendril of dreamsand that coils around his waist and dips down, tracing the vee of his hips.

_This time I want to be the monster._

…

Pitch isn’t certain how much time has elapsed by the time Sandy lets his tentacles and stingers (oh, stars, he’s going to be hurting for _weeks_ ) uncoil and relax, finally letting Pitch free. It takes him several minutes to remember how to speak, minutes in which he is perfectly content to curl up against Sandy’s soft, almost jelly-like body and drift pleasantly.

When at last he finds words, the first thing he says is, “Next time you want to do something like that, don’t waste time pretending it’s your birthday.”


	3. Chapter 3

It’s taken an almost absurd amount of coaxing, subterfuge, and every ounce of cunning that Sandy possesses, but the payoff is worth it. She, heiress to the throne of the constellation Lyra, and he, decorated, celebrated General Kozmotis Pitchiner, are finally, _finally_ alone together, without any hangers-on or prying eyes or other interruptions, and Sandy fully intends to make the best possible use of this stolen time.

She’s daydreamed about this for – it seems like eons. Ever since he’d first caught her eye, first offered her that smile, in the middle of some boring ceremonial dinner, the purpose of which she’s all but completely forgotten by now. He’d been the guest of honour, she’d been forced to play the willing hostess in the absence of her mother, and she might have written him off as nothing more than another uptight military official if it hadn’t been for that smile, a small and private grin with just the slightest twinkle of mischief. It wasn’t so much a grin as an invitation, instantly including her in a secret, private party of two, setting them both apart from the dull official nonsense carrying on around them.

She’d wondered, for a moment, if she wasn’t making it up, dreaming wide awake. But then he had turned a politely distant look on the Pleiadian ambassador and encouraged the man’s pointless, rambling tale, before turning back to Sandy and whispering, “If you can get away, meet me in the garden in fifteen minutes.”

She’d been only too happy to oblige.

Sandy had half-expected an attempt to shake off her bodyguards, a few stolen kisses, a quick grope under the rosebushes, but in this too her general seemed to be different than the other soldiers who frequently pass through Lyra on their way to the front. He seemed perfectly content to sit and talk with her, instead, offering bitingly accurate observations about the nobles in attendance at the feast and listening to her stories of royal mishaps with genuine interest. He had her nearly in tears with his impersonation of the Pleiadian ambassador when Sandy’s father’s senior undersecretary finally found them and dragged them both back in to lead the dancing.

Kozmotis turned out to be an excellent dancer, good enough even to compensate for Sandy’s height and weight and sluggish feet, and Sandy was surprised to find she was actually enjoying herself at a formal dance for once, instead of dreaming of the instant she could escape to the observatory and no longer have to face the humiliation of being a wallflower – and not just any wallflower, but a _royal_ one. And judging from the way his amber eyes flashed in the soft glow from the palace’s stardust walls, she wasn’t the only one who was having far too much fun for an official ball.

They’d parted that night as friends. Luckily, they weren’t parted for long; Lyra was near enough to the front that it had become something of a military outpost, and the General quickly became a constant and welcome presence around the palace. It hadn’t taken many more boring dinners, many more stolen conversations, for Sandy to realise there was much, much more than only friendship between them.

And now, at last, they have the chance to act on it.

She’s wondered, since one ill-chosen remark, just what it would be like with her general. In her various fantasies, he’s been rough, dominating, hungry; gentle, tender almost; slow and thorough; fast and hard and furious; even at times letting her take the lead. It’s hard to tell, even though she fancies she knows him so well, just what kind of a lover he would be, and Sandy has dreamed him a thousand different ways.

She never once dreamed that when at last the time came, he would be _shy_.

But shy he is, or at least self-conscious, pulling back every time their kisses grow too heated, every time her hands find his chest or his waist or roam below his belt, especially if she tugs at the fastenings of his clothes. When at last she loses her patience and presses herself against him, throwing her arms around his neck, he jerks away as if burned.

Sandy sits back, shocked and frustrated and just a tiny bit hurt. She levels an accusing glare at Kozmotis and forms a few hasty, subdued symbols in midair from her sparkling dreamsand. What’s the _matter_ with him? Has she been reading the signs wrong all along, taking things too far? Does he not want her?

That draws a strangled gasp out of him, a look of such horror and longing that it stops Sandy mid-sign. “Sandy, Sandy, no, how could I not? You are – radiant, beautiful…” His lovely tenor cracks slightly. “Royal…”

Is _that_ what the problem is? Sandy huffs out a sigh, and reaches up, unclasping the necklace she wears. The royal seal of Lyra, worked in gold, dangles from a shimmering golden chain, tacky and gaudy and not nearly as lovely as the masterpiece that is her Kozmotis. She leans forward, making certain that her breasts press against his chest as she does so, and hooks the chain carefully around his neck, sighing silently into his ear. She watches the shiver that runs down his back, hears his echoing sigh, with a swell of pride and desire, and when he wraps both arms around her and buries his face into her wild golden curls, she can’t help but smile.

It takes her a moment to make out the words he whispers into her hair, keeps whispering as he lays hot, gentle kisses along the shell of her ear and down the soft curve of her jaw. When she realizes he’s murmuring apologies, though, she grasps his chin in one hand and raises him to meet her eyes. She shakes her head, once, definitely, sand spelling out what her voice can’t. He wants her, she wants him, and there is nothing to be sorry for.

His laugh sounds choked. “I do, I do want you, more than anything,” he whispers, and his voice is hoarse. “But I’m afraid I cannot give you what you want.”

That is the last straw. Sandy pulls back, crosses her arms (carefully, so as to also display her rather ample breasts to their best effect), and scowls. A giant, glittering question mark forms above her head and she jabs a pointing finger at it, demanding an explanation before they go any further.

Kozmotis shakes his head, and takes the royal seal Sandy had hung around his neck in one hand, staring down at it in something close to despair. “I’ve deceived you, Sandy. I never meant – I didn’t think -” He shakes his head angrily, brushes a stray lock of shining dark hair from his forehead. “I love you. And I can’t keep lying to you.”

Something cold and heavy sinks into the pit of Sandy’s stomach and settles there, chill and dreadful. She motions again to the question mark, awful possibilities flickering through her mind. He is a spy – an assassin – he is here to gain her trust and steal her throne – no, he is an agent of her father’s, sent to keep her from choosing an unsuitable consort – no, he is –

He is shedding his coat.

Sandy raises an eyebrow in query, but Kozmotis isn’t looking at her. Instead, he reserves his glare for the roses that shield them from prying eyes as he tosses the garment aside, and fumbles with the ties of his white linen shirt. It’s as close to naked as Sandy has ever seen him, and she wonders again at his usual prudishness, fear turning it to something suspicious and dreadful. Is he hiding some hideous deformity? Or worse yet, a fearling mark?

The anticipation, Sandy decides, will kill her faster than the truth. She shifts over, her smaller, steadier fingers taking over his task. She smiles faintly, bitterly, when she reflects that undressing him was all she’d wanted to do in the first place.

But nothing horrible is waiting when she pulls the shirt over his head. Instead, she’s greeted by the curious sight of a swath of bandages, crisp and white, wrapped several times around the upper part of his chest. She frowns, and looks up to Kozmotis for an answer, reaching out gingerly to rest a hand just above his heart. Is he wounded? What –

He doesn’t stop there, though, but begins to unwrap the bandages, still not meeting her eyes. Sandy loses the last of her patience, then, and twists a handful of dreamsand into a pair of scissors. A few quick snips slice through the binding strips of cloth, and Kozmotis flinches back, too late. The breasts that Sandy’s quick cut releases are not anywhere near as plump as Sandy’s, little more than a handful each, but unmistakable nonetheless. Sandy blinks at them in confusion for a moment, before looking up at Kozmotis’ face, but he – no, Sandy thinks, turning things over in her head, _she_ – won’t look at Sandy, but instead stares at the ground, crossing her arms across her chest in a vain attempt at modesty.

“I didn’t mean to lie to you. I just thought you might understand, after all they don’t take you seriously even though you’re the fiercest person I’ve ever met…  I – I’ll understand if you don’t want – if you can’t – Just say the word or, or give me the order and I’ll go. I won’t bother you -”

Sandy decides she’s heard more than enough apologies for one night. She reaches up, and cuts off Kozmotis’ ramble by the simple expedient of pressing her lips to hi- _hers_. When she pulls back, Kozmotis is staring at her as though she’s just grown wings.

“Sandy?”

Sandy grins, and bites her bottom lip, trying to think of the best way to phrase this in sand shapes. She gives up that train of thought quickly – it would only come out crude and awkward, and besides, she can think of a much better way to show her general that it isn’t the parts that she’s fallen in love with, but the person.

And besides, it’s rather fascinating to listen to the sharp, bitten-off gasps that Kozmotis gives when Sandy presses kisses to her bared chest, the moan she tries to hold back when Sandy flicks her tongue against one satiny nipple and feels it pebble up almost instantly. Sandy tries that again, running a hand up the lean muscle of Kozmotis’ stomach to cup her other breast with one hand, and if this is a little unusual, well, Sandy thinks she could very quickly get used to it.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is set in the [Doors of Perception AU](http://archiveofourown.org/works/656973/chapters/1197369), with permission from the author.
> 
> It also plays havoc with the timelines therein. You have been warned.

“Remind me again why we’re here in this nest of vipers,” Kozzy mutters to Sandy as he feigns a polite smile at a tall, skeletal woman in a black dress and too much severe makeup. It looks more like he’s baring his teeth, but Sandy tactfully doesn’t mention it.

“We’re here because getting a private show at the Joyce-Lessmore Gallery is a very, very big deal and Bunny invited us to opening night so we could celebrate with him. We’re here for a friend. Now stop worrying so much.”

“I can’t help it.” Kozzy squares his shoulders and glares at two passing patrons of the arts, a small, round man and a slender, androgynous figure with a shock of bleach-white hair. “These people bring out the worst in me.”

“Well, you will, for Bunny’s sake.” Sandy reaches out and takes Kozzy’s hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “It won’t be long. A few more hours and they’ll all be so thoroughly drunk on the complimentary champagne that they won’t remember their own names, much less notice if you’re being bitingly sarcastic to their faces.”

“And then, after that, we get to go home?”

“Well, to the after-party at North’s, but that’s -”

Kozzy squeezes back. “That’s home.”

And it’s beautiful, to hear him say those words, simple and yet meaning so much more than the simplest of their meanings. “You’re right,” Sandy agrees, gazing curiously around at the framed prints hanging all around them. “I wonder how many of these people know where the artist learned his trade? I think perhaps there’d be fewer of them hanging around if they knew.”

Kozzy scoffs. “Oh, they know, all right. And they’ll be making fun of him for it, later tonight, after they’ve had a chance to get at the champagne and think no one ‘artsy’ can hear them. But you have to appreciate art, if you’re anyone. Or at least, you have to own a lot of it, and it has to be very expensive and either very trendy or very classic. If not, then _you’re_ the mockery, not the artist.” His laugh is bitter. “Isn’t it funny?”

“I don’t see how it is,” Sandy admits.

“That’s all right. You don’t have to. In fact, I’m glad you don’t.” A white-shirted waiter drifts past, his collar starched so sharply that it looks more like a razor blade than cloth, and Kozzy elegantly snags two flutes of champagne from the tray he carries. He offers one to Sandy with a smile that is almost as sharp as the waiter’s collar, and Sandy thinks of how easily, how effortlessly he seems to fit into their surroundings, how he seems to belong without even trying. Unlike Sandy, he slips through the crowds like a barracuda through a school of minnows, exchanging sparkling false smiles with everyone whose path he crosses.

 _They really do bring out the worst in you_ , Sandy thinks, and takes a long pull of champagne, sputtering slightly when the bubbles escape up his nose.

Thankfully, it’s then that Tooth intercepts them, her fingers laced through Jack’s and her usual bright smile looking a little worn around the edges. “Sandy! Kozzy! Thank goodness, finally someone we know.”

Kozzy breathes a relieved sigh as well, and if his smile is sharp-toothed, at least his eyes are softer. “I was beginning to wonder if we’d been cast adrift in a sea of designer gowns and tailored suits. Not that those words mean anything when compared to your incomparable creations,” he adds, smoothly, nodding to Tooth without even the faintest hint of embarrassment at the slip.

Jack raises an eyebrow, exchanging a look with Sandy. “Hey, you don’t have to suck up to us. It’s not like we’re negotiating a merger or something.”

Kozzy shuts his eyes and smiles, shaking his head. “I’m sorry. Old habits, and all that. How _are_ you two? Enjoying your empty nest?”

Jack and Tooth exchange a meaningful look, before Tooth abruptly changes the subject. “Have either of you two seen Bunny around? We wanted to say congratulations, but he’s disappeared somewhere.”

Sandy wrinkles his nose. “From his own party?”

The look on Tooth’s face makes it clear that while she wants to be generous, she has a lot of sympathy for their friend, and not very much for the cream of society who surround them. “Well, this isn’t…exactly our kind of crowd. And one or two of them were making…derogatory comments. About ‘hippies’,” she adds, with a murderous gleam in her eyes.

“Hey, if Cottontail split, I can’t really blame him. I mean, is a patronage really worth having to put up with people you can’t stand twenty-four seven?” Jack shrugs.

“That’s not _quite_ how patronage works,” Kozzy interjects, with deceptive calmness. “Or both parties would go absolutely insane. Patronage simply means that the patron pays for art on a regular basis, generally from the same artist, and while it does reek of aristocratic conceit, even a few hundred years of democracy haven’t been able to stamp it out, or to produce a better alternative for the artist looking to make a decent living wage.” He drains his champagne glass, and deftly deposits the empty flute on the tray of a passing waiter.

“I know _that_ ,” Jack grumbles, fidgeting with his tie. It’s blue silk, the same shade as the blue in Tooth’s rainbow–hued sari, and would make him look far more mature and sophisticated if he’d stop pulling at it like it’s a noose. “I _have_ lived with artists preeetty much constantly for the past fifty-odd years. I just meant that Bunny’d lose it if he had to hang around this crowd on a regular basis, _which he would have to if he was going to stay in their good graces_ , and I can’t say I’d do any better if I were in his shoes.”

Kozzy arches an eyebrow good-naturedly, but says nothing more.

“So -” Tooth starts, but that’s when Jack spots something that makes him forget about his strangling tie.

“There he is! Come on, Tooth, we’ve got to catch him before he vanishes again.” He takes off through the crowd at top speed, only pausing occasionally to call back hasty apologies to the many people he bumps into. Tooth shrugs apologetically, and follows him at a slightly more measured pace, leaving Sandy and Kozzy alone together once again.

But not for long.

“My god, do my eyes deceive me?” A voice booms, and a man with too-thin, almost colourless hair and a smile that practically oozes greasy charm steps out of the crowd, his arms held wide – either for effect or to show off his expensive-looking suit, Sandy has no doubt, definitely not out of anything resembling genuine affection. “Pitch! Kosmotis Pitchiner, as I live and breathe! It’s been – how long now?”

He claps Kozzy companionably on the shoulder, and Kozzy makes a face that lies somewhere between contempt and despair. “Milt. Not long enough, I’m sure. What on Earth are you doing here?”

If the smarmy stranger notices the insult – or, for that matter, Sandy’s presence – he doesn’t show it. Instead, he throws his head back and laughs uproariously, showing off perfect white teeth that, like the suit, are just flashy enough to prove that they must have cost a fortune. Sandy wonders, unkindly, just why this man who is rich enough to afford custom tailoring and orthodontics hasn’t done anything about his hair. “Still the same old sense of humour, I see. Where’s Stella?” His voice drops to what, for him, must constitute a hush. To Sandy, it still sounds several hundred decibels too loud. “Oh, right, the split. Heard the bitch took you for everything you were worth. Still, can’t win ‘em all, eh?”

“I’d appreciate it if you would not call my ex-wife juvenile names,” Kozzy says evenly, and only Sandy seems to notice the barely-restrained anger in his voice, the tension in the lines of his shoulders.

The man Kozzy had called Milt laughs again, patting Kozzy on the back and paying no attention to the way Kozzy’s expression grows more and more steely with each overly-familiar touch. “Ever the class act, huh, Pitch? Always so _discreet_.” This is accompanied by an exaggerated wink that has Sandy squeezing his champagne flute so tightly that he worries it might shatter in his hand. Kozzy looks almost as though he’s been turned to stone, and if looks could kill, the smarmy stranger would be nothing but a chalk outline on the floor.

The man’s voice drops again, to a volume which an ordinary person might call conversational but which, for this man, almost definitely qualifies as a whisper. “Of course, there are always some things that are harder to hide than others.”

“Milt,” Kozzy says, and his voice is as flat and as level as the plains of Hell, “Have I introduced you to Sandy? My _husband_?”

The man called Milt’s smile freezes for an instant, and when it becomes animate again it has lost some of its luster. “No, I don’t believe you did,” he says, and it’s only then that Sandy realizes there’s been a gloating edge to his voice throughout the whole conversation, a gloating edge which has only just now disappeared.

“Really? Oh, how rude of me. I do apologise,” Kozzy says, not sounding sorry in the slightest. “Milt, Alexander Somnia, my better half. Sandy, this is Horace Milton, an old – friend – from school.” His tone makes it perfectly clear that ‘friend’ is the last word he would willingly choose to describe the man.

Sandy nods in acknowledgement, and Milt nods back, his smile slowly turning back up to its previous megawatt glare. “Well, well, well. It looks like the rumours turned out to be true after all,” he says mildly, and Kozzy puts an arm protectively around Sandy, gripping his shoulder.

“So it would seem.” His voice is as icy and hostile as the slopes of Mount Everest, and Milt practically beams.

“Well, it’s been lovely catching up, but I’ve got to dash. You know how it is – people to see, people to be seen with…” He shrugs. “If you’re ever in the Hamptons, do look us up. I’m sure Sophia will be _dying_ to hear all the news.”

“How kind,” Kozzy replies, in a voice that clearly says he’d rather be pickled alive. “Please, don’t let us keep you from your very important business.”

“Oh, I won’t.” Milt gives Sandy another nod, and with a little wave, he vanishes back into the crowd.

Kozzy doesn’t stop glaring after him until Sandy almost shouts his name, and then looks around as though he’s just woken up. “Sandy?”

“You’re hurting me.”

“Oh. Oh! I’m sorry.” Kozzy lets go of Sandy’s shoulder, and Sandy tries vainly to rub some feeling back into his arm.

“It’s okay. Who was that, and why do you hate him so much?” Sandy manages to refrain from asking whether there had ever been anything between his husband and the creep with an effort of will that he thinks he might actually deserve a medal for. Now is really not the time for petty jealousy.

“Was it really that obvious?” Kozzy glances back in the direction Milt had gone, his upper lip curling. “I must be off my game.” He sighs, and rubs his temples, giving Sandy a small and very weatherbeaten smile. “Can we find a waiter first? If I’m going to dredge up old memories, I’m going to need at least one more glass of champagne.”

“Just give me the very basics,” Sandy says hurriedly. He’d rather not drag Kozzy back through his own personal hell in the middle of this particular school of piranhas.

“We were at school together,” Kozzy says, as though that explains everything. And, Sandy thinks, remembering how quiet and how shuttered Kozzy has always gotten whenever the subject is broached, it sort of does.

Sandy turns his champagne flute around and around in his hands, watching the bubbles sparkle and pop. “And did you – were you ever…”

Kozzy stares at Sandy as though Sandy is a particularly difficult riddle for a long moment, before the penny drops. “What? No! Oh, _God_ , no. No, that miserable little toad hated me from day one, and believe me, the feeling has _always_ been mutual.”

Sandy nods. “And…the rumours?” he asks tentatively, aware that he’s treading on delicate and unstable ground.

Kozzy just shakes his head, staring into the middle distance. “What else?” he asks, at last, and takes Sandy’s glass from him, emptying it in one long draught. “Come on, let’s find more champagne. I don’t want to face the possibility of having to be even nominally polite to that piece of slime again, unless I am far more inebriated than I am now.” He strides forward, forcing Sandy to hurry to catch up with him.

“Why would you have to be polite?” Sandy asks, once he’s matched pace with Kozzy again. “You’re an adult. They don’t own you. If he tries to talk to you again, tell him to go fuck himself.” He thinks of how Kozzy’s face had looked when the man called Milt had spoken of secrets, and adds darkly, “With a blender.”

That gets a surprised laugh out of Kozzy, who slows his furious pace enough that Sandy no longer has to struggle to keep up. They walk in silence for a few long minutes, the babble and chatter of the partygoers around them filling in the gap.

“I can’t,” Kozzy says, at length. “Things are different, in these circles. It wouldn’t do to air your dirty laundry where everyone can see it. It’s a sign of weakness. You don’t wear your emotions on your sleeve.”

“I do,” Sandy ventures, thinking of the old house, the light and the life and the grief that had shaped and swallowed him, the love that has always healed him, a long life full of heartbreak and transcendent happiness.

This time, Kozzy’s laugh just sounds strangled. “Pitchiners don’t.”

This evening alone, Sandy thinks, would have told him in a few short hours more than he ever wanted to know about what Pitchiners do and don’t do, even if he hadn’t already known enough to make him want to cry. He slips his hand into Kozzy’s and squeezes reassuringly. “But you’re not one of them.”

“ _I’m_ not -” Kozzy’s voice cracks, and he clears his throat angrily. “Look around you, Sandy. This is the world I grew up in. These are the people I was taught to respect, to emulate, to cozy up to. If I had to, I could probably name everyone in this room, and give you their net worth in five different currencies. I know their habits, their manners; I can blend in without so much as a ripple. How am I _not_ one of them?”

Sandy grips his hand a little tighter and gazes up at his face, which Kozzy turns away. “You’re not a Pitchiner. You’re a Somnia.”

Kozzy stops so abruptly that a short woman in a red cocktail dress nearly walks straight into his back. She catches herself just in time, and hurries past with a vehement “Ex _cuse_ me!”

“ ‘Til death do us part’,” Kozzy breathes, and grips Sandy’s hand so hard that Sandy thinks he can feel the bones grinding together. He turns to look at Sandy, and his eyes are shining. “You really think it’s that simple?”

Sandy brings Kozzy’s hand to his lips, kissing the plain gold band that encircles Kozzy’s ring finger. “Simple? There’s nothing simple about it.”

Kozzy nods, and cups Sandy’s jaw in his other hand. Heedless of the crowd around them, he pulls his husband close and kisses Sandy fiercely, breathlessly, as though he expects Sandy to be torn away at any moment. Sandy kisses him back, as slowly and as patiently as he can in the face of Kozzy’s desperation, trying to say without a word that he isn’t going anywhere. And, Sandy thinks, even in the middle of all this, there can still be a perfect moment.

But, like all moments, perfect or otherwise, it has to end.

“Do you mind? This is a public – Oh, Pitch, it’s you. Well, I should have known.”

Kozzy pulls away with a sigh. He turns to face the man called Milt with a small and thoughtful smile. “And I should have known that you wouldn’t miss another chance to stick your nose in where it’s not welcome.”

Sandy knows that tone of voice well, and he puffs out his cheeks and looks away, knowing what’s coming next.

When he feels brave enough to look back, the man called Milt has adopted a quizzical expression of wounded innocence. “I beg your pardon?”

“We aren’t friends,” Kozzy states, as dispassionately as if he’s commenting on the weather. “We never were. I do not like you, I will never like you, and I am sick to death of pretending I don’t despise everything you are and everything you stand for. You’re a miserable, sycophantic little bully and you always have been.”

Milt’s smile looks a little more like a grimace. “Those are rather…harsh words,” he says, with a hint of a laugh in his voice, and Kozzy’s smile grows wider. He half-turns, studying his fingernails with an aura of practiced indifference.

“Really? I think there are harsher. Words like, oh, I don’t know, _faggot_ and _freak_ and _monster_ and – shall I go on?” he asks lightly, glancing up. “Because I have almost a decade’s worth of choice vocabulary at my disposal, although I believe some of them got repeated rather often.”

Milt sputters, his mouth opening and closing, as he tries to recover. “Can you – can you _believe_ this?” he asks of the room at large, which, Sandy has noticed, is beginning to take notice of the disturbance they’re causing. Sandy’s sure he’s red as a tomato, but if he’s perfectly honest, he wouldn’t stop Kozzy now even if he could.

“You don’t have to believe it,” Kozzy replies, even though the question had not been directed at him. “It’s true. But I’ve already wasted too much of my life talking to you. Good evening, _Horace_.” He turns on his heel and starts to walk away, leaving the man called Milt standing stupidly with his arms raised as though in supplication, in the middle of a ring of whispering socialites. Sandy follows, trying with little success to quash the huge grin that threatens to take over his face.

“Everyone knew you’d end up like this, Pitch!”

Kozzy stops, his back ramrod-straight, and takes a deep breath. When he turns back to face Milt, he doesn’t say a word, only arches an eyebrow and waits for Milt to speak.

The man called Milt, for his part, looks far less certain of himself, glancing awkwardly from politely-staring face to staring face as though suddenly reconsidering his decision to shout in the middle of the crowded gallery. But he plunges forward nonetheless. “You had _everything_ and you chucked it all for no damn reason. And what are you now? Nothing. Nobody. I’m surprised you even bothered to show up tonight. It’s not as though you’d get so much as a kind word from anyone here.” He brushes imaginary dust from the lapels of his suit, squaring his shoulders. “Go crawl back into your hole.”

“Are you quite finished?” Kozzy asks, and there isn’t even a hint of a smile on his face. When he gets no response, he nods. “Good. For your information, I am here tonight at the behest of a friend. A _real_ friend. Not something you’d know anything about. And I am sorry for you that this is all you know, all you can conceive of. I hope you and Sophia are very happy together.”

That wasn’t quite what Sandy was expecting. But he can’t say he doesn’t feel like he’s positively glowing with pride as he turns to leave. He stops, though, when he realizes Kozzy isn’t quite done.

“Oh, and one more thing, Horace,” Kozzy says, mildly. “If you ever call me ‘Pitch’ again I will knock your pretty white teeth down your throat.”

…

“I’m going to have to apologise to Bunny,” Kozzy says, thinking aloud, as they walk back to the car. “Do you think flowers, a fruit basket, _and_ a sincere thank-you note delivered with an appropriately contrite expression will do the trick, or will I have to beg him for forgiveness and accept a penance? What do you think, Sandy?”

Sandy thinks that if he opens his mouth, he’s going to shout and scream and possibly lift off the ground and just float like a helium balloon from sheer delight. Or perhaps he’ll just kiss his husband senseless. Whichever comes first. “I think whatever you have to do will be worth it,” he finally answers, and the smile that breaks Kozzy’s face in two is nothing like the shark-toothed grin he’d put on at the beginning of the night.

“I _know_! Oh, Sandy, I feel _magnificent_ , like I could take on a – a hurricane, singlehanded, unarmed, you name it, I’d still win. Yes, I know generally one doesn’t think about hurricanes when one thinks of massive things to fight, shush. That was – _everything_ I’ve always wanted to say to them, and -” He stops, abruptly, and the smile fades. Sandy reaches out and grabs his hand, just in case, but the look on Kozzy’s face is not sadness; it’s closer to awe. “And nothing went wrong. Nothing appeared out of nowhere to rip me away from you. Sandy -” Kozzy pulls him in close, holds him like a drowning man clings to a life preserver, and for a long handful of minutes neither of them talk at all.

When they finally come up for air, Kozzy starts whispering and doesn’t stop, peppering little kisses all along Sandy’s jaw and down his neck as punctuation. “That was the second-most amazing thing I’ve ever – no, if the first was marrying you, then the second had to be finding you, and then – no, but then I found you _again_ , and that was – oh, damn it all, I don’t care, it was amazing and _you’re_ amazing and Sandy, Sandy, let me fly you out to Massachusetts, I want to take you to my father’s grave, I want to strip you down right there to your glorious naked self and make you come for me until you pass out and see how the old bastard likes _that_ , I want to take you home and make you _scream_ for me, please, Sandy, please -”

Sandy wants to answer, but something has gotten switched off – or perhaps on – in his brain and all he can do is pant, and moan a little when Kozzy’s tongue curls along the shell of his ear. “Home…sounds good,” he manages, and then gives up on trying to collect his thoughts into coherent sentences.

Kozzy hums happily into Sandy’s ear, and presses him up against the side of their car. One moment, Kozzy’s delicious warmth is pressed up against him, too, and then Kozzy nips lightly at his earlobe and lets go, stepping away and leaving Sandy feeling cold, his brain scrambling to catch up. “Then maybe we should stop kissing long enough to get there,” Kozzy says, and a little thrill runs up Sandy’s spine at the hoarseness that’s bled into his velvety voice.

“Uh,” Sandy answers, intelligently. And then, “Yeah.”

Kozzy makes another pleased noise, and slips a hand into Sandy’s pocket. Sandy shuts his eyes and leans his head back to hit the car roof with a dull _thunk,_ trying his hardest to keep breathing as cloth and the faintest of finger-pressures brush lightly, teasingly, against his already interested erection.  There’s a jingle of keys, and then the hydraulic hiss of the car door opening, and he pulls himself together as best he can, sliding into the passenger seat gracelessly and slamming the door behind him.

A thought presents itself, like a sudden and surprising thorn on a beautiful rose. “Dammit. What about the after-party at North’s?”

Kozzy frowns. “I completely forgot about that.”

“We’ll have to put in an appearance, at the very least. Let them know that we weren’t arrested or anything.”

“They’re not going to arrest us.” Kozzy leans over and kisses him, long and full, before turning the keys in the ignition. “One of the reasons I’m actually glad it’s not still those hazy days of summer.”

“They might. Kozzy, technically you uttered threats.”

“Threats?”

“Yeah, you threatened to punch him.”

Kozzy shrugs, fluid and beautiful, and Sandy stares greedily, for a moment unable to believe that this is his life. “Worse things are said in bars every day. And besides, I may no longer be the director of the North American arm of the Pitchiner-Black conglomerate, but that hardly means I’m completely without defenses.”

“I have no idea what you just said,” Sandy admits, honestly. “And I don’t really care right now. Take me home and ravish me.”

Kozzy smiles, and there’s just enough of a sharp edge to it to make Sandy shiver delightfully. “As you wish.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a prompt on the kinkmeme asking for Kozmotis Pitchiner returned without any of his senses but "his deep-rooted sense of Morality and Justice". Somehow that turned into both characters as nebulous personifications of abstract ideas.

I learned you, and you were unmade. I have worked so hard to unlearn you, and you were remade.

After a lifetime of falling, what has it cost you to rise?

The walls of the world have shrunk in your absence. No longer do we extend to the membrane of the universe, to the limits of imagination. Now we are confined to a single planet, a single solar system, guarded by a ring of rubble and heated by only the light of one small star. They think they have made such a great achievement by putting a man on the moon. They see nothing. They know less.

It only makes them the more precious. They are all that we have. (All that we are. All that we will ever be.)

They are all that’s left.

They, and we. (and we are not even that anymore)

(you were a dancer wheeling circles against the sun and you are not even that anymore)

Your shape is walking, your shape is talking, but I will not mistake your shape for you again. I unlearned you, to learn you again. I unlearned the colour of your eyes, the silk of your hair, the places to touch that made you moan and sigh, the way your smile quirked in the corners. Learned the taste of you in fall gold and  marching songs, learned the way you flicker behind the eyes of children dancing along edges and leaping unafraid, thoughtless, learned you in the cadence of startled laughter and honest words.

(there is much to be said for wielding dreams)

Have you unlearned the taste of me? Have you unlearned the touch of my hands against your skin, the warmth of my lips against yours?

Will you learn the colour of my dreams dancing through the sleeping heads of the children I’ve sworn to protect, the children your shape tries to destroy? Will you learn the caress of my every thought of you, soft and warming like a star? Will you learn which memories to touch make me smile, which hopes to make me shiver and sigh?

Will you teach me how to shake my shape off with you?

(be starlight with me and beat the darkness back; be dreams with me and scare away the nightmares; nothing with a shape will resist us)

(nothing without a shape will destroy us)

(never

ever

again)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another kinkmeme prompt, this one asking for Pitch and Sandy's Golden Age background and what went sour between them. I was feeling pretentious that day. 
> 
> (Aside: most of these ficlets were written before _Sandman and the War of Dreams_ , and do not take it as canon.)

1/allegro

If glory had a voice, it would be soprano, high and piercing, commanding attention to itself, ever-challenging, ever-demanding. Its highs and lows, its trills and its ululations, seemingly so effortless, demand work, practice, careful attention to maintain.

No voice is whole on its own.

You meet at a concert, as strangers. You part as tentative friends. Paths that will not cross; wish-granter, battle-commander. Creator and destroyer. The dance is old as time itself, old as cycles of dark and light, and it moves to the beat of no human drum.

Paths cross. Paths interlock. An intricate dance, upon an ebony dance-floor, marbled with stars.

2/adagio

Starlight tastes thin, but also rich, somehow, sweet as the crisp dawn of an early spring morning when the frost has just turned to dew, warm as the cozy glow of a candle in a snow-bound window late at night, clear as the silvered glass that throws back reflections of the dancers as they wheel around the room. Starlight tastes like stolen kisses, too-long touches, lazy afternoons. Starlight tastes like starlight’s lips on your own, and there are no words for the low and constant flame they stoke within.

3/scherzo

If duty had a voice, it would be bass, deep and low and constant, underscoring every other note. Every high, every low, contrasted with that dark rich immutability, ever-present, all-consuming.

 _You don’t have to_ he says, in whispers, in worries, in careful touches and in more-careful kisses. _Stay, for her. Stay for_ me _. Don’t go. You needn’t._

You must.

You meet as friends. You part as strangers. Wish-granter, battle-commander; creator and destroyer, two voices out of sync, out of tune, a note soured, a note off-beat. Two voices, discordant. Two different duties, two different paths, two different songs. How could you ever think that you could harmonize?

4/rondo

A voice can be silenced.

Creator, destroyer; the steps are harder but the rhythm is the same.

The dance cannot be halted. Change partners, and start again.


	7. Chapter 7

You are born on the water, and you will die on the water.

Your fate has been written from the moment of your first breath, your first cry rippling outward to disturb the slumbering universe, vast and dark and cruel as that great expanse of salt and all the fallen tears of every mother whose son has ever set out to sea. Your fate has been written in the tangles of seaweed and the white-foam crests on waves like obsidian mountains, white horses riding down glass hills forever, falling into valleys and disaster. Your fate has been twined through your hair like loving fingers, soft and sweet and soothing, lulling you into false sleep with the soft rocking of the tide beneath you. You are born on the water, and you will die on the water.

The sea watches eyelessly, watches you grow, buried in the surf and the sand and the salt of the air. Watches as you enmesh yourself ever deeper into its rhythm, its breath, its pulse. You wax and wane with the moon. The nights are softest and kindest and the fathomless depths glow under the starlight, answering lights from impossible distances, alien above and alien below. Creatures stir in the deeps, creatures that have no name, creatures from the very oldest blackest tarry nightmares of humanity, sticky and choking in the pit of the night. One day you will catch one, and you bait your line with both trepidation and eagerness.

One day you will catch one.

One day you will meet your doom dangling from a fishhook.

Your nightmare-creature, when it comes, will not be grotesque as those that have never seen the light. Your nightmare-creature, when it comes, will not be dark and hidden. Your nightmare-creature, when it comes, will wrap itself in scales that shine like starlight, like moonlight, like the green flash the sailors swear you can see at sunset. Your nightmare-creature will be bright as daylight and your heart will be dangling from the hook along with it.

You will set your nightmare-creature free.

You will dream it that night, hot and bright and soft and true, and wake with the taste of salt-tears on your lips and tongue.

It will be to you what the sea once was. It will consume you, it will enthrall you, it will wrap its pretty arms around you and pull you down for kisses that taste of the salt of the earth, good and fine and wholesome. It will pull you softly under, sing such sweet songs that your ears will feel like ringing in the silence. It will curl itself around you, inside you, nestle itself quietly into your ribcage and cast greedy coils around your heart. It will hold you so tightly that you will forget everything but its embrace, forget even the one truth which has held sway over you for so long.

You are born on the water, and you will die on the water.

One day the waves will close over your head and not open again. One day you will not see the moonlight, save through tides and ripples, save through fathoms and fathoms of endless deepening dusk. One day you will take a deep breath and breathe not sweet sea air but only sweet sea, simple and constant and immutable as destiny.

One day you will not care, with soft arms clasped round your throat and sharp kisses bruising your lips, spattering them with rubies and mothers’ tears. One day you will sink, and you will not wish to rise.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For [whentheoceanmetsky](whentheoceanmetsky.tumblr.com)'s [Dreameater AU](http://whentheoceanmetsky.tumblr.com/tagged/dreameater-AU).

Twilight falls like a blanket, gradual, gentle, a slow decline into sleep and strangeness. Dreams fall like snow, thick and soft and silent, building on trees and bearing down on rooftops, a great and soundless smothering. Eyelids grow heavy, heads droop, yawns spread through rooms at the speed of sleep.

The Gentlemen are walking.

Everyone knows the stories, of course. The Fearspinner who haunts the places where things open or shut, the places where the edge is too close or the ice is too thin or the ledge is too tall, whose icy touch and terrible voice have paralysed so many hapless travelers in their paths. The Dreameater whose sweet smiles and sweeter songs have led so many souls into sleep (and, it is whispered, so many souls out of their homes and out of the mortal world altogether). Everyone knows their titles, fewer know their faces, and none know their names.

If any know of their partnership, the silent mutualism that binds them each to the other, then they do not speak of it. If any know the words that pass between them unspoken, the way that terror and delight nourish them both, the vast and strange intelligences behind the gilded and the shadowed forms, their tongues fell silent long ago. For any who have caught a glimpse of the truth of these two, not quite myths, more than legends, have lost something – perhaps their reason, perhaps their voice. Perhaps their own selves.

No one dares to ask, anymore.  The world has too many dead and dreaming as it is.

So it is that their meetings go unobserved, even under skies scattered with stars like discarded diamonds, sprays of elegant chaos wheeling their glittering trails overhead, the clawing fingers of trees reaching up to snatch a handful. There is no one to see the Fearspinner, tall as a tale, incline his regal head to the small figure of the Dreameater, no one to see the latter’s grin white as lambswool, white as innocence, no one to see him bow his golden head in return. There is no one to see them walk, together, nary a footstep in the pristine snow left behind them. There is no one to notice the moment that their hands brush, touch, clasp. There is no one to notice the thickening of shadows around them or the extra shimmer on the snow, no one to notice the branches of the trees warp into more twisted shapes, no one to feel the air draw taut as a drawn bowstring, quivering with potential energy until you can almost hear it twanging out a single clear note.

There is no one but the moon to bear silent witness to their kisses under the open sky, each one crystallizing like the crisp snow, weird imaginings born of every intersection of flesh and flesh. The dreamers will see truly unusual visions this night, heated and tangled on the theatre of closed eyelids.

They move like strangers to form and like practiced partners, each knowing the steps the other will take, each anticipating the other’s actions and moving to meet them. Each touch is deliberate, delicious, planned and spontaneous and greeted with surprise and delight. Each plays the other like an instrument, and only the silent, solitary moon, cold and distant, hears the songs that they play.

They only stop once both are sated, exhausted, wrung out, the air around them buzzing with expended energy and undirected dreams. They curl into each other, ignoring discarded clothing and jewellery, black and gold filigrees fine as art lying scattered about like shells on a beach, once inhabited, now abandoned.

They will not rise until they must, until some soundless, sightless signal draws them to their feet before the sky begins to lighten. Then they will part ways, each gathering up what they’ve lost in the night, each turning to a different sunset and a different handful of dreamers. The world will turn, will settle, the strange and the impossible will become, again, the province of the twilight hours. Once again, things will make sense.

At least, until the Fearspinner and the Dreameater seek each other’s company again.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Blacksand Week 2 on tumblr. Prompt: Sweet Dreams.

At first, Sandy thought that perhaps he was imagining things. After all, all he really saw was the occasional shadowy movement out of the corner of his eye, nothing really incriminating that he could point to if needed. But it didn’t take long for his worst suspicions to be confirmed.

Pitch Black was back.

And he was following Sandy.

Sandy considered sending a warning to his fellow Guardians, but something kept him from speaking up. After all, the Boogeyman hadn’t done anything particularly suspicious – yet. He wasn’t even sneaking around - in fact, he seemed almost to _want_ Sandy to notice him, if the looks he’d been sending Sandy’s way before he disappeared were any indication. ( _And what looks_ , a traitorous little voice whispered in the back of Sandy’s mind, low and purring. Sandy was just grateful there was no one around to see him blush.) No, Sandy decided, the others didn’t need to know about this, not just yet. He’d keep his eyes open, keep his guard up, and see if Pitch decided to act.

When he did, though, it was not at all what Sandy had been expecting.

He’d prepared himself for an attack, or possibly a dull, taunting, one-sided conversation with his counterpart. He had not expected Pitch to turn up just outside of the room of a small boy Sandy had had a particularly rough time getting to go to sleep, wearing a shark-toothed grin and carrying something rectangular and slender and wrapped up in matte black paper with a dark gold ribbon.

Sandy raised an eyebrow when Pitch held the object out to him, eyeing it curiously. It didn’t _look_ dangerous (or, at least, not dangerous in the conventional sense), but there could be anything under that paper.

“Oh, don’t give me that look, old man,” Pitch said smoothly, giving the object a light shake. Sandy heard a faint, papery rattling from inside, and no hissing, screaming, or horrifying whispers, always a good sign. “If I wanted to kill you, I’d do it. Not that it would stick. No, think of this as…a peace offering, if you will.”

Sandy didn’t take his eyes off of Pitch as he hesitantly took the box, watching the Boogeyman’s smirk grow wider and more delighted as Sandy carefully tugged the ribbon over the corner of the box. Frowning in deep suspicion, Sandy peeled the paper back to reveal –

A box of chocolates.

Suspicion quickly gave way to confusion. Sandy looked blankly from the fancy scrolled lettering on the lid, up to Pitch, and then back down at the box. Hoping for clarification, he pulled the lid off, but all that looked back up at him were a tasteful assortment of chocolates in little paper wrappers. If _he’d_ had to choose a ‘sorry I killed you and tried to kill all of your friends, but let’s put all that behind us’ gift, it would’ve been something like…flowers. Flowers that signified remorse and sincerity. Not _chocolates_ , the only symbolic value of which was decadent and rich and _certainly_ not appropriate for a peace offering.

“I do hope they’re sweet enough for you,” Pitch said, directly into Sandy’s ear, making Sandy jump. Pitch just kept smiling, unruffled, and Sandy could swear that his eyes flicked up and down the length of Sandy’s small body. “Personally, I prefer dark chocolate, but every once in a while I get a craving for something… _sweeter_.”

Sandy suddenly found himself too flustered to produce a coherent question mark, two attempts falling apart before he finally managed to make one that stayed together long enough to be read. Pitch traced its curve with his eyes, something that _really_ shouldn’t have made Sandy feel as flushed as it did, and then reached down and, with perfect self-possession, plucked a chocolate from the box still lying open in Sandy’s hands. “Oh, surely you of all people catch my meaning, Sandman.  After all, you’re the one who best understands symbolic language.” He raised the little square of candy to his lips, never taking his eyes from Sandy’s, and asked, “What do you _think_ a gift of chocolate means?”

Sandy nearly dropped the box in surprise when Pitch’s tongue snaked out to snag the square of chocolate, rather than simply popping it into his mouth. _Stars_ , had his tongue always been so long? And so…flexible?

Pitch swallowed, humming happily. “Careful, Sanderson, if you blush any more brightly the children will wake up thinking it’s morning.”

Sandy tried, without much success, to burrow his face into the collar of his pyjamas like a turtle into its shell. Pitch sighed, the sound almost uncomfortably soft and intimate for the open air, under the faint silver slice of moon. “Oh, just try the chocolates, Sandman. I promise it won’t kill you.”

Sandy bit his bottom lip, and considered his next move. Finally, after a quick glance at the flavour map, he picked up a square of what promised to be solid dark chocolate.

Pitch arched one brow at this. “Dark chocolate, old man? Perhaps I’ve misjudged your tastes.”

Sandy met his eyes with his best attempt at a sultry smile, and opened his mouth as wide as he could, watching Pitch’s eyes grow wider as he did so. He carefully set the candy on his tongue, and bit down, shutting his eyes at the burst of rich, ever-so-slightly bitter sweetness.

When he opened his eyes again, Pitch had lost the smirk, his gaze fixed unblinking on Sandy’s face. When he noticed that Sandy was watching him right back, Pitch swallowed, reflexively, his cheeks growing darker with a flush. “Do -” he began, and had to clear his throat, sounding significantly less composed than he had mere minutes before.  “Do you accept the gift, then?”

Sandy, in answer, only chose another chocolate, this time with nougat centre, and popped it happily into his mouth. It seemed clear to him who the winner of this particular round was. Although, he reflected, they could both win just as easily.

 _Needs someone to share it with,_ he signed, and Pitch swallowed again.

“In that case, might I tempt you into visiting my -” He paused, and Sandy was certain he was trying to find a more appealing word than ‘lair’ or ‘hole in the ground’. Sandy, however, spared Pitch the trouble by shaking his head.

_Let’s take this to Dreamland._

Pitch nodded, and licked his lips, the self-satisfied smile from earlier returning by degrees. “And -”

_And I’ll be calling the shots._

“Hmm. If it’s going to get this reaction, maybe I should bring you chocolates more often.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Blacksand Week 2 on tumblr. Prompt: 8000 Blacksand AUs.

_“Eldritch horror from before the dawn of time seeks same.”_

That was the ad, in its entirety. That, and an email address, which Sandy assumed was the contact information for whoever had written the ad. It was a string of meaningless letters and numbers, which for some reason made him take it seriously. If the address had made some lame pun or cheesy Cthulhu reference, he would have assumed it was a joke, someone’s idea of a harmless, witty little prank that hardly anyone would ever see. Sandy himself wouldn’t have seen it if it weren’t for the fact that he was stranded in this coffeeshop without anything to read but a paper that someone else had deserted, waiting for a latte that he was beginning to suspect the barista had forgotten about.

The latte, though, seemed less and less important with each time he read over those ten words. Looking furtively around himself to see if anyone had noticed just what had caught his attention, Sandy pulled out his phone and tapped out the string of letters and numbers that made up the stranger’s email address, checking every few characters to make certain he was getting it right.

…

Sandy typed and retyped his introductory email more times than he would ever admit, trying to find exactly the right words. Part of him knew that he was being absurd – the likelihood of his mysterious contact actually being what they said they were was approaching absolute zero, especially when he considered that they were advertising in a daily paper. Probably just some bored kids setting up an elaborate prank; that, or he was about to become part of a dreadful reality TV show.

Still, he couldn’t quite squash that sense of stomach-dropping mingled awe and dread that had swept over him the moment the words had caught his eye. And so, he read over the body of his email one more time, scanning it carefully for any flaws.

_Hello;_

_I saw your ad in the Sunday Advertiser and had to contact you, even though I may not be quite what you were looking for. My name is Sanderson Mann and I live in the East Borough, not far from the university. Would you like to meet somewhere, for coffee or just to talk?_

Sandy shook his head at himself. This was ridiculous. Absurd. He had no idea what he hoped to gain from this.

He added _I’d love to meet you_ to the end of the email and hit send before he could think long enough to regret it.

…

Sandy couldn’t concentrate at all the next day. Instead, he found himself obsessively refreshing his inbox, his stomach falling with each new email that wasn’t from his mystery contact. He really was an idiot. What had he thought was going to happen? He was just going to find some sort of ancient, unholy being in the personals section, give it an email, meet up with it for coffee and a chat, and go about their lives? He was an idiot, the biggest idiot, the world’s biggest – no, the _universe’s_ biggest idiot, and he should never have –

His heart leapt into his throat as his little message icon began to blink.

_You have (1) new message._

_RE: “Eldritch horror from before the dawn of time seeks same.”_

Sandy pounced on the email like a cat on a catnip mouse, clicking it open before he could worry himself into leaving it unopened for fear of what he might find inside. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting – corrupted text? A contract for a reality television show? Just a short message saying “sorry, you’re not my type”?

What he received, however, was none of those things. Instead, it was a simple, two-line message which, much like the ad that had set Sandy on this course, filled him with the weightless, giddy feeling of pure exhilarating terror.

_I would love to meet you too. Look behind you._

Sandy shook his head, feeling like an even bigger idiot, and spun his chair boldly around to face the room behind him. He was greeted by nothing but shadows, the dingy interior of his own tiny basement suite draped in the early-winter dark like cobwebs dangling from the corners.

Sandy let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding, feeling oddly let down.

“All right, you got me,” he sighed to himself, starting to turn his chair back to the computer. Something flickered in the corner of his eye, and he stopped dead, the chair trying to carry him onwards even as he braked frantically with both feet.

In the thickening shadows all around his room, clusters of brilliant eyes, moon-pale or star-bright, flickered open.

“Oh _wow_ ,” Sandy breathed, watching the creature unfold out of the dark. He couldn’t quite seem to focus on any one part of it at once, couldn’t pick out the edges of its form (if this really was its _form_ and not just the way that Sandy saw it, which Sandy somehow doubted), but its crystalline eyes cut through the dark like searchlights, headlights, northern lights, enough to make Sandy feel dizzy and drunk and free-fall terrified. “Wow,” he repeated, stupidly, unsure if it was simply a result of letting his mouth run on autopilot while he tried to process what he sawfeltheardtasted _knew_ before him or if his brain was shutting down under the onslaught.

Something soft and dry slithered across his face, down his cheek, and a voice that sounded like it came out of the blackest depths of the ocean and the belly of the wolf that devoured grandmother whispered, somewhere under his cerebellum, _Wow indeed._ It was laden with humour drier than bleached bone, clearly amused at Sandy’s reaction.

Sandy swallowed, almost involuntarily, several times, trying to ignore the soft, curious brushes against his arms and legs and face and chest. “I wasn’t – wasn’t really expecting you to be the real deal,” he admitted, softly, and the next touch felt almost more like a caress.

_I told you. “Eldritch horror from before the dawn of time”, I believe were my exact words._

“I know. But you can’t trust anything people say these days,” Sandy answered, unable to keep a maniac grin from spilling across his face.

 _You did_.

“I did.” Sandy squirmed away from a particularly ticklish touch, feeling laughter bubble up like champagne from somewhere deep down, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to contain it for too much longer. Knowing, with a sudden rush of overwhelming emotion, that he wouldn’t have to. “But it’s just so hard to be an eldritch _anything_ in the city these days.”

The otherbeing froze, inasmuch as it had been moving in the first place, the caressing touches turned to faint, still pressure against Sandy’s little round body. _You said you weren’t what I was looking for._

“Weren’t _quite_ what you were looking for.” Sandy smiled, letting the light and the laughter leak out around his edges, pressing up inquisitively against the shadows that filled his little room, exploring the otherbeing with all of his senses rather than the limiting human six. _But after all, even an eldritch horror and an eldritch joy have to stick together in times like these._

The otherbeing filled with the sense of a smile, a pleasant surprise. _They call me Pitch_ , it told him, appreciatively.

 _Sandy_ , Sandy answered, slipping the rest of the way out of his body to taste that smile better, dark chocolate and bitter black coffee and rich thick syrup. _Have you tried bodies yet? They’re funny things but they make it so much easier to fit in. You just have to remember to feed them._ _And_ , and there was no way that he could blush in this state but he was certain he felt a certain rosy dawn glow fill him up, _they can do so many interesting things_.

He knew the moment that Pitch’s feelings turned from distaste to a heated curiosity, and let out another smile in spite of himself.

_It might be worth a try._


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Blacksand Week 2 on tumblr. Prompt: the Golden General and the Star Pilot.

The nightmares rolled over Pitch in waves, their undertow dragging him back away from the light. Even as he scrambled for escape, for a moment’s relief from the terror that flooded him, stung him like a sandstorm, he knew that it was futile. He was too weak, his nightmares ( _his_ nightmares!) too glutted on the children’s fear, and despite all his efforts, the last point of light vanished in a storm of glittering black just as he reached out for it one last time. Pitch shuddered, just once, and braced himself for the next wave of the onslaught –

And found himself floating, drifting without real purpose or direction in a star-spackled void. More stars appeared with each passing moment, until the airy darkness was alight with all the shimmering glory of the – the Milky Way, a stray thought reminded him, the main thoroughfare between constellations. The sudden solidity of the deck underfoot took him by surprise, as did the smooth, polished wood of the banister under his hands, the stars streaking past, and the crisp rustle and snap of the sails overhead. The solar cloth gave off little showers of sparks with every change of the aether – inefficient, they wasted almost an eighth of their power that way, but beautiful. And brightness knew that his men needed – _deserved_ – something beautiful in the too-short spaces between engagements.

As though the thought of beautiful things had been a summoning beacon, one of the stars they flew past halted, and turned to keep pace alongside them. Its glow was too intense to look directly into for long, but he thought he caught a glimpse of a familiar halfmoon smile. His own smile grew to rival it, a surge of unexpected warmth filling his chest, and he raised an arm in greeting –

And was floating, again, watching the little figure with his face at the prow of a gilded ship, sleek and sharp and strangely familiar. Watching, from myriad eyes, the small round star and its small round pilot – _Sanderson_? he thought, and the shock that rippled outward shook through all the dark spaces between the stars. _Sanderson_? What was _he_ doing here? For that matter, what were either of them doing here? And the stranger-with-his-face looking at Sanderson like the little creampuff was the only star in the sky – why did that make him feel so _cold_?

He’d show _them_ cold. Pitch reached out, and the stars flickered out in his wake, casting a swath of shadow over the little star and the gilded ship. Both pilots’ besotted gazes turned sharp and wary, the stranger-with-his-face barking out orders to an unseen crew, Sanderson peeling his small star away from the ship to shoot sparkling jets into the dark –

Darkness, warm and close and safe, Sanderson’s glow the only light, illuminating the lines of his lover’s body. Sanderson leaning down to press sweet, tender kisses to the sharp and elegant angles of his face _._ Warm arms around him, skin searing against skin, held and cherished and -

 _He doesn’t have_ your _face_ , something hissed, close and quiet and terrible. _You are wearing_ his.

A battlefield, the faint thunder of explosions on the horizon, golden blood and brackish black ichor mingling under his feet, chaos and terror, and the stranger-with-his-face, terrible golden armour, cutting and cutting though dark bodies, tearing into him with each stroke –

A crack of light growing wider, slicing though the overwhelming dark, doors swinging open to reveal _his face_ that _hated_ face -

Sanderson, determined, eyes burning hate, star hurtling straight towards him –

The scream of a falling star cut abruptly short –

Gold flashed in the dark, and Pitch woke to the screams of horses. The nightmares were in a panic, ignoring him completely in favour of running from the golden whips which were effortlessly scattering them to bits. Their attempts to escape were cut short, the diminutive Sandman cutting them down with ruthless efficiency, a look of cold determination on his plump face.

The last nightmare fell apart in a shower of glittering black dust, and Sandy looked around with his usual air of dreamy, unhurried curiosity. Pitch shifted backwards, hoping to vanish into a shadow before the little man saw him, but his movement set the fallen grains of black sand rustling. Sandman’s whip shot out before he even turned to look, his eyes widening when he found that he hadn’t snagged a nightmare, but rather their king.

Pitch muttered a very old curse, plucking uselessly at the strand of gold wrapped securely around his throat and leading back to the Sandman’s hand. “Very neat work, Sanderson. Now that you have me collared, do you plan to finish me off while I’m weak, or just haul me back to the surface for your Guardian friends to mock? Is there a sparkling golden cage in Dreamland with my name on it?”

Sandy blushed, the glow from his cheeks intensifying, casting a warm radiance into the chilly dark. For a moment, the length of dreamsand around his throat, the Sandman holding Pitch metaphorically in the palm of his hand, felt – strangely, of course strangely – familiar and _safe_. Echoes of remembered warmth from – from a _nightmare_ , he reminded himself. Why would he feel _safe_ putting himself under his worst enemy’s control?

Pitch didn’t realise that Sandy had been speaking – or, at least, making the sand symbols that qualified as speaking – until he’d already missed half of the conversation. He raised a hand, and Sandy stopped mid-‘sentence’, a frozen image of a bird hovering suspended in the air above his head.

No, not just any bird, Pitch realized, taking in the furious burn of Sandy’s cheeks and the way the strand of dreamsand connecting them dissolved, leaving him with an oddly hollow feeling. A _dove_. Carrying – was that _really_ an olive branch in its mouth? “A truce? Sandman, I shot you and killed you not two nights ago.”

Sandy shrugged, his sweet grin taking on a mischievous twist as a cartoonish skull appeared over his head, followed by a flashing X. Pitch swallowed a groan. He did not need his only _true_ rival’s dizzy antics, not now, not when the memory of lingering touches and that look of unforgivable hatred still swirled around the inside of his head. Not when he was still so low that _his own nightmares_ could affect him in such a lasting way. But he was powerless to make the Sandman leave, and they both knew it.

“Maybe I didn’t,” Pitch sneered, suddenly disgusted with Sandy’s very continued presence, his aura of sleepy incomprehension, the faint golden glow that only stripped the underground lair of its grandeur and mystery, showing it in its ruin. “Don’t I get points for trying? I am your _enemy_ , Sandman. Yours and the Guardians’. And if you think that just because my own creatures turned on me, just because I’m down here in the dirt, that you can swoop in and save me and I’ll be so pathetically grateful that I’ll do whatever you say, then you are _mistaken_.”

Sandy only blinked, slowly, before offering again the symbol of the dove. Pitch ground his back teeth together, looking away as he pushed himself, undignified and awkward, to his feet, brushing down his robe. “Get it through your dozy head, little man. I. Am. Your. _Enemy_.”

The look that the Sandman gave Pitch was almost unbearably ancient and knowing, and Pitch felt something tug in his chest at the sight, something he couldn’t quite bring himself to name, something deep and hollow and aching. He drew in a breath, sharply, but before he could say anything to forestall Sandy’s next ‘words’, they were already hanging in the air between them.

_You weren’t always._

“You’re wrong,” Pitch gasped, the words that should have been razor-edged coming out breathless and desperate instead. “You – you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Sandy crossed his arms over his chest, biting his lower lip thoughtfully. Twice he glanced up at Pitch, who couldn’t bring himself to find a shadow to slip into. There would be more nightmares, he knew, running rampant throughout the lair, but it wasn’t that knowledge that kept him rooted to the spot.

When the shape of a ship he’d only seen in his nightmares began to take form over Sanderson’s head, Pitch slashed a hand through it before he knew he meant to, snatching up a handful of golden sand. It sat warm as a kiss in his palm as darkness ate through it, turning it black and cold and heavy with menace. Sandy scowled, and Pitch snapped, “What? No, it wasn’t very nice. In case it escaped your notice, _I am not nice_. And I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish with this. I am not and was never your -”

Sandy cut Pitch’s argument short quite succinctly by grabbing two handfuls of the Nightmare King’s robes and yanking Pitch down to press their lips together.

For a moment, Pitch relaxed, the feel of Sandy’s lips soft and inviting and somehow familiar, like an old song only remembered in snatches. And then, like a minor chord –

_wearing his face_

_can’t have_

_never_

_ever_

_yours_

Pitch pushed Sandy away so violently that the little dreamweaver actually let out a sound when he struck the rough stone floor, a tiny huff of expelled air. He looked up, and his expression of terrible hurt and age-old resignation only stirred a black, resentful anger in Pitch, thick enough that he swore he could feel it rising up his throat to choke him.

“I am _not_ your lover,” he hissed, the words falling from his lips like lead. “That man is long dead.”

Sanderson moved to make another sand symbol, one that Pitch ignored. The ceiling of his domain suddenly felt too low, pressing down on him, suffocating. He glanced around for a shadow dark enough to escape into, stepping into the nearest one and letting himself dissolve.

His last words to Sandy were distorted enough by the echo and the carrying power of the shadows that they might almost have sounded regretful.

“And I am the one who killed him.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Blacksand Week 2 on tumblr. Prompt: Glitter and Doom.

It happened almost too fast to follow. One minute Cosima was complaining about how impossible it was to find a good corset in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and the next a rotting arm had punched through the window and grabbed her hair. The only thing that saved her from being dragged up and out of the small basement window was her wig coming off in the zombie’s hand.

Cosima screamed, a sound more layered with rage than fear, and grabbed the wig right back, trying to yank it from the zombie’s grip. “Oh no you _don’t_ , you undead bastard! That’s my last human-hair wig!”

Thinking quickly, Sandy scooped up the axe that Cosima had leaned against the dressing-room wall and swung it, hard, into the zombie arm. It took three hits, but finally the arm came free, trailing black sludge, its fingers spasming once and then releasing their grip on Cosima’s wig. She stepped quickly backwards before it hit the ground with a wet smack, spattering her sleek black pumps with stinking gore.

Cosima wrinkled her nose, before setting her wig carefully on the wig stand to the right of the window. Sandy twirled the axe thoughtfully as she watched for any sign of more of the undead, waiting as Cosima finger-combed the tangles from her wig, making disgusted noises every few seconds. “Would you _look_ at the state of this! Disgraceful.” She paused in her work, fixing Sandy with a pointed glance. “You know, _some_ people would say that battling zombies in seven-inch heels and spangly evening wear is impractical and practically a manifest deathwish.”

Sandy shrugged. As far as she was concerned, the day she gave up wearing full drag would be the day the world _really_ ended.

Cosima, as if reading her mind, sighed indulgently and left off fussing over her wig to come press a kiss to Sandy’s glitter-and-gore-stained temple. “Oh, I know. I don’t agree with them either.” Her smile turned mischievous, black-painted lips parting to reveal a flash of white teeth. “I’ve always wanted to live in a B horror movie. _Killer Drag Queens versus the Zombies_. Besides, at least we’ll make good-looking corpses.”

Sandy offered Cosima her brightest, biggest smile, and reached up with both hands to pull her girlfriend down for a kiss. When they broke apart, Cosima’s black lipstick was smeared halfway up one cheek, a sprinkling of Sandy’s gold body glitter mixed with her heavy white makeup. Her eyes glinted brighter than the glitter, and, as Sandy watched, she slowly and luxuriously licked her lips.

“Well, now that my makeup’s going to need fixing _anyway_ ,” Cosima purred, and a thrill shot down Sandy’s spine and straight to her cock. “How about we take this somewhere a little more secure?”

Sandy brought up a hand to cover her silent giggle. The zombies would just have to wait a little while longer.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a prompt: "Sandy sing to Pitch to show him his love (he actually is pretty terrible at it and the guardians are maybe watching from afar like NO) Pitch is both a bit weirder out BUT also very flattered and find it quite romantic"

It was far, far too late to regret inviting Sandy to her Bollywood movie marathon, but Tooth was regretting it anyway.

It wasn’t that Sandy had a _bad_ voice, exactly. It was just that, for someone who spread dreams and was completely silent so much of the time, she hadn’t expected him to be so… _loud_. And, of course, he couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. And that was _before_ she considered just who it was that Sandy had decided he needed to serenade.

Pitch Black had looked horrified, initially, when Sandy (and a very concerned Tooth, who had tagged along out of worry for her friend and fellow Guardian and was now earnestly wishing she hadn’t) had dropped out of the sky in front of him and immediately begun belting out “Somewhere” from West Side Story. Pitch had looked to Tooth at first, but she’d had no more answers than he did. Unfortunately, he hadn’t taken a swing at Sandy, as Tooth had almost expected. Instead, he’d gone from looking perturbed, to flattered, to downright _lovestruck_ , while Tooth could do nothing but look on in disbelief. This couldn’t really be happening. She’d fallen asleep in front of the television and Sandy had thought it’d be funny to give her this ridiculous dream. Right?

She pinched herself, hard, with no success - all she gained from it was a hurt arm to match her injured eardrums.

She grimaced at the dreamweaver and the Boogeyman, neither of whom seemed to realise she was still there, and made up her mind. She’d go find the other Guardians. Maybe they could collectively talk a little sense into Sandy.

Also, she wanted to escape before Pitch started singing along.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a prompt: "Pitch and Sandy meet in a diner at 1 in the morning."

Pitch didn’t recognise the man who sat down next to him at first, through the fog of insomnia and the jittery feeling of too much coffee on an empty stomach; however, he knew exactly who he was sitting next to as soon as the small, unassuming figure opened his mouth to give the dead-looking waitress his order. He’d know that voice anywhere. Anyone would. It was the voice that soothed half the nation to sleep at night.

He waited until she’d shuffled over and plopped a mug of coffee before the blond to ask, “So tell me, what is the great Doctor Sweet Dreams doing in a dirty little hole like this at an hour when everyone ought to be curled up and dreaming?”

Dr. Sanderson Reeve, whose sleep-aid tapes did indeed bill him as Doctor Sweet Dreams, sighed heavily into his coffee. “I knew this was a bad idea. All right, what do you want to keep it quiet that I can’t even make _myself_ get a good night’s sleep?”

Pitch pursed his lips, taking in the rather sorry sight of the exhausted-looking doctor, his golden hair in a downright fantastical mess, the bags under his eyes heavy enough to sink any ship but the eyes themselves bright and clever and kind.

"Buy me another coffee," Pitch said, at last.

Sanderson’s head snapped up, and he fixed Pitch with the most adorably puzzled look that Pitch had ever seen on someone who wasn’t a small fluffy animal. “That’s it? That’s all you want from me?”

Pitch shrugged. “And maybe a little conversation. After all, neither of us are getting any sleep tonight anyway.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a prompt: "when pitch met vampire!sandy"

Pitch had always thought that, if one were to meet a vampire, it would be somewhere ancient, a crumbling castle in Romania, a plantation manor in Louisiana, a graveyard where the names had worn off the headstones with moss and weather and time. Or, failing that, somewhere glamourous, decadent; a boardwalk in California, under the flicker of crazy lights from the amusement park, or a nightclub down some forgotten alley, bass pounding like a heartbeat.

He didn’t expect to run into one in the home improvement section of the used bookstore on the corner. Horror, maybe. Home improvement, definitely not.

But he’d turned the corner and had the breath punched out of him by the sight of the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen, only to have that beautiful creature turn and ask for his help fetching a book on a shelf that was just slightly out of reach. It had taken Pitch entirely too long to draw enough air back into his lungs to be able to answer in the affirmative, time during which the golden vision’s eyes had widened, a small and curiously pointed tongue darting out almost unconsciously to wet his perfect, perfect plump lips.

That was the moment that Pitch realised he was truly, madly, royally fucked.

Although it wasn’t until two days later, when he was up a stepladder rewiring a light fixture for Sandy, as his beautiful creature had turned out to be called, and his hand had slipped, slicing open his palm on a protruding piece of metal, that he discovered _just_ how deep the rabbit hole went.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bunch of mostly unconnected three-sentence fics for various prompts.

Fear, Pitch had decided long ago, bloomed best in silence: it wasn’t very frightening to hear one long, drawn-out creak in the middle of a cacophony; it would raise the hairs on no one’s neck to be alone in a house full of regular and expected noise; and absolutely _no one_ was afraid if, in answer to their tremulous “Who’s there?”, they received a reassuring answer. No, with the exception of a few well-tailored, hand-picked sounds designed to emphasize the silence, Pitch firmly believed that the quiet was his domain, and he stuck to that belief as though it were a vow.

Perhaps that was why his perennially chatty counterpart was always so eager to wring a moan, a curse, or, best of all, a cry of “Sandy!” from Pitch’s lips.

 

...

 

They meet in a speakeasy, under the street, under the clatter and clamour of everyday life, in a tiny, smoke-filled room that nevertheless has its own glitter, its own gritty, illicit glamour.

What they are doing, here, is just as illicit as anything the people who throng around them may indulge in, just as likely to get them into trouble if anyone should find them here. But under the street, in this little world of smoke and mirrors and illegal pleasures, no one notices an odd couple, one tall and dark and one short and golden, both a little hard to look at and very hard to remember for more than an instant at a time, and there is no one around who might care if they get drunk, not on bootlegged liquor, but on stolen draughts of each other.

 

...

 

The girl was whimpering again.

Pitch let out a sigh of defeat, reflecting on everything he’d done for her; he’d found (well, stolen) the finest toy collection a six-year-old could possibly want, he’d made up a batch of dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets (children liked those, didn’t they?), he’d even offered to read her a story (although now that he thought about it, Thomas Harris didn’t exactly write for children), and yet she was still crying like being taken from that family that _clearly_ didn’t deserve her was the worst thing that had happened to her in her six short years of life.

Pitch fixed on a smile, and settled down next to her, offering to set up a tea party and wishing, deep down, that Sandy would come see his surprise _soon_.

 

...

 

Sandy knows that this is their best chance at a lasting truce between the kingdoms, that his sacrifice will ensure that his people never again feel the wrathful bite of winter’s ferocity, but his body doesn’t seem to have got the message; his knees feel as wobbly and as weak as dandelion stems, his lungs strangled shut, his heart banging against his ribs like a caged bird desperate for freedom. He has no idea what to expect from the prince of Winter, the creature who has led the icy kingdom’s incursions against Sandy’s lands and people since time immemorial, forcing them into this agreement - and now, thanks to that selfsame agreement, Sandy’s betrothed.

When the doors are finally thrown open, Sandy finds that his every fear of what the Winter Prince could be is true, and less than true; the man is every bit as sharp and severe as Sandy had imagined, but there is a glacial beauty in the  impossible angles of his face, a quicksilver light of mischief in the haughty look he turns on Sandy, and Sandy thinks that perhaps, just perhaps, this betrothal could be good for more than just their kingdoms.

 

...

 

He’s not cut out to be a prophet, he’s tried to explain to the bright being with a thousand burning eyes that’s taken up residence in the corner of his bedroom, on the ceiling; his faith has suffered too many devastating blows, his once-unwavering belief cracked to the core, his immortal soul - whatever little there may remain of it - broken past healing. There must be others, those who could carry the message with the kind of conviction, the kind of inexhaustible, inextinguishable fire, that it needed - _deserved_ \- had to be someone younger, stronger, surer, better suited in every way than himself.

The bright being only rustled their many wings (too many wings to all fit into the space the being seemed to occupy; it wasn’t only because of their brightness that they hurt to look at) and said, in that voice-that-was-not-a-voice, that that was for neither of them to choose.

 

...

 

( _for the AU where Sandy and Pitch are eldritch beings without actual form or human morals_ )

Later, once people were no longer too embarrassed to talk about it, it would be a huge scandal; there would be a media frenzy, an inquest into the cafe, how hallucinogens might have made their way into its baking or its beverages, how a whole room full of people might have instantly and simultaneously lost contact with this plane of reality.

But all that was in the future, which seemed very far off and not at all important, not when Sandy and Pitch had an entire coffee shop full of people at their disposal and a chance to exercise their less-than (more-than? Other-than) human natures.

Sandy paused in drinking in terrified delight for long enough to press something like a kiss, lengthening shadows under the fading sun, roller-coaster peaks, luminous creatures in the black abysses of the ocean, to the thoughts he recognized as Pitch, and reflected that not being able to decide whether to give the humans transcendental experiences or an uncontrollable desire to copulate had resulted in the best possible sort of compromise.

 

...

 

( _for the Blood Red Blacksand AU, in which Pitch is a cannibalistic serial killer and Sandy is his psychologist and murderous mentor. Also, they're very domestic._ )

"This is _amazing_ ,” the woman from down the street, the one with the truly atrocious perm and the small dog that always seems about one wrong look away from lunging at someone’s throat (Pitch can’t remember her name, thankfully has limited interactions with her, Sandy is much better at people) coos in a kind of rapture, licking barbecue sauce off of her fingers. “I mean, everyone says writers aren’t paid enough, why don’t you pack it in and become a chef somewhere?”

Sandy, over on the other side of the patio sharing a drink with a small knot of polo-shirted young fathers from the neighbourhood, catches Pitch’s eye and winks; Pitch feels his smile turn from a forced grimace to an easy, genuine grin as he jokes, “No, no, I couldn’t ever run the risk of having someone else discover my secret ingredient.”

 

...

 

"You have a teddy too!"

Pitch turns at the interruption to his sixty-seven-billionth scan of the con floor for anyone he even vaguely knows, only to see no one who could have interrupted him; he has to look down in order to locate the small, round boy with the tie-dyed t-shirt, golden ponytail, and dreamy, not-quite-present smile who, Pitch notices, is holding up a stuffed bear with similar accoutrements.

Pitch remembers the black bear that he had thought safely stuffed into his coffin-shaped backpack just as he asks, “Do I know you?”; the smaller boy only smiles a little wider, and answers, “No, but I hope you’ll want to.”

 

...

 

( _continuing the previous fic_ )

"I feel like someone’s about to ask me why I haven’t turned to ash in the sunlight yet," Pitch grumbles, his scowl having seemingly no effect on the dreamy, delighted smile that Sandy always wears; it’s wider today, and sunnier (if that’s even possible), but then this festival _is_ what Pitch presumes is to Sandy and his ilk what Halloween is to his. “Tell me again why we paid all this money to come stand in a muddy field and listen to a bunch of bands you can barely even _see_ because we’re so far back in this positive _flood_ of humanity - what?”

It takes him a moment to process Sandy’s request, and a moment longer to protest, but in the end, Pitch capitulates, as they both knew he eventually would; after all, Pitch would do anything to keep that sunny smile on Sandy’s face, and short though Sandy might be, he gets a pretty good view of the band from atop Pitch’s shoulders.

 

...

 

They’ve only just sat down with their drinks (Sandy having already taken two huge, delighted sips of a disgustingly sweet-sounding iced beverage, Pitch merely trying not to spill his plain black coffee because of how hard his hands are shaking) when, in the middle of a sentence, Sandy falls face-down on the table.

Pitch nearly has a panic attack then and there, and it takes him precious moments to calm down and gather enough air back into his lungs that he can reach over and feel for a pulse; he’s certain that his heart stops for one shattering moment when Sandy abruptly pops back up, shaking his head as though he’s just woken from a particularly deep nap.

It turns out that the mysterious illness that Sandy had hinted at suffering from in their many, many interactions online was narcolepsy, and that Sandy falling asleep mid-sentence was not an uncommon occurrence; “Still,” Sandy says ruefully, “that wasn’t quite how I wanted our first real date to go.”

 

...

 

When the little golden creature that honestly, more closely resembled a Shiba Inu or perhaps an overgrown Pomeranian than a wolf had sat back on its haunches, cocked its head to one side, and, without fanfare or ado, suddenly turned into a little golden man, Coz had jumped up so quickly that he’d banged his head on a pipe, popping it out of its socket and soaking himself in freezing water. By the time he’d managed to get the pipe back in place, he’d realised that the unabashedly naked man who had _definitely_ been a dog moments before was laughing silently, which flooded Coz with relief; he didn’t know much about supernatural creatures, but the one thing he _did_ know from various movies, books, and TV shows was that werewolves and vampires were supposed to have some sort of instinctive, ancestral loathing for each other, and he was wildly relieved to find that this did not seem to be the case in real life.

"Um, hello," he said, at last, trying not to look too long at the naked (surprisingly cherubic, chubby, golden-haired, _adorable_ ) man, in case he saw something he didn’t want to see, “I’m…uh, I’m new.”

 

...

 

"You can’t _begin_ to imagine the power, old friend,” Pitch - or whatever is wearing his body - sighs, solid black eyes slipping closed in an expression of ecstasy that Sandy doesn’t doubt would turn to murderous rage in an instant if Sandy so much as shifted in the bony claws that hold him in place.

"I think maybe I can," Sandy says with a pointed glance at the animated raptor skeleton holding him, before turning his attention back to searching the high galleries around the main room of the library for any flash or flicker of blue, hoping against hope that his research assistant hadn’t made it down with the book he’d gone up into the galleries looking for before Pitch’s skeleton army had torn down the doors.

Pitch’s chuckle is low and dark as chocolate, familiar enough to yank painfully on a handful of Sandy’s heartstrings while at the same time bearing just enough of a strange, hollow echo to make all the hairs along the back of Sandy’s neck stand to attention; he shakes his head slowly, fixing Sandy with those eyes like black holes as he sways across the short distance that separates them and presses one long finger, strangely cold and dry as the pages of the old books he’s always loved, under Sandy’s chin to tilt Sandy’s head up to face him as he breathes, “But I could _show_ you.”

 

...

 

( _continuation of the previous fic_ )

"This day just keeps getting better and better," Jack moaned, his sneakers scrabbling against the cliff face, clinging to Sandy’s hand as though it were the only thing keeping him from falling to his death which, funnily enough, it was.

Sandy ground his teeth and pulled, feeling every ounce of Jack’s weight dangling at the end of the arm that wasn’t grasping the branch of a convenient tree for dear life; he had a sinking feeling that he wasn’t going to be strong enough to pull his assistant up himself, but there was no way he was going to let go.

That was when bony arms wrapped around his middle and pulled, and Sandy, wondering just how many times he was going to get grabbed by reanimated skeletons before they found and destroyed the artifact that was giving Pitch all this power, released the branch and latched onto Jack’s wrist with his other hand, hanging on with all his might; for a moment, he thought they were all going to fall, before the undead creature that was holding him gave an almighty yank and dragged Jack back up over the lip of the cliff, dropping Sandy to leave him and Jack lying panting in the grass, and as the raptor’s empty eye sockets stared down at them, Sandy wondered at its actions, wondered if there mightn’t be some piece of Pitch, deep down, fighting against his possession after all.

 

...

 

Sandy looked up from her textbook to see a dripping-wet Pitch standing in the doorway, wearing nothing but a towel and a scowl and waving a plastic bottle, and had to immediately turn back to her textbook to try to hide her face as Pitch demanded, “Have you been using my shampoo?”

"No, I have my own, it’s specially formulated for curls," Sandy countered, staring at the word ‘polychromatic’ as though it had offered her a personal insult.

There was silence from the doorway for a moment, the kind of silence that Sandy imagined was heard in Pompeii shortly before the eruption, and then Pitch said, “Well, if I find out you _have_ been using my shampoo, you’re buying me another bottle,” before turning and storming out of the room, leaving Sandy to faceplant into her book and contemplate just how little work she’d be able to get done with the mental image of Pitch, soaking wet and naked, burned onto her mind.

 

...

 

Pitch had a feeling that his new employer’s activities weren’t exactly all legal and aboveboard, but he didn’t know just how deep he was getting in over his head until his apartment tried to kill him. He was shaking by the time he managed to hack through the firewalls that someone _else_ had put into place in _his_ beautiful custom mainframe and shut the entire apartment down, and he was still shaking when the door burst open and two strangers in dark suits (droids, Pitch could tell by the iris-cams and the copyright stamped inside one’s wrist when it helped him to his feet) scooped him up and out into a hover-limo, where he was somehow not surprised to find his new employer waiting, with a look of deep worry on his youthful, innocent face.

"I didn’t think they’d target a lowly programmer," Sandy had apologised, as they sped through the night, the windows set to full opacity, cocooning them in a quiet, private dark; he hadn’t been able to meet Pitch’s eyes as he added, "They must have known that you - you are so, so much more, to me," and Pitch, overcome with something he couldn’t name, had reached out before he could stop and think and overanalyse the situation, and kissed Sandy as hard as he dared.

 

...

 

There’s only one spot left open in the exhibition, and Pitch is so certain that he’ll get it that he almost chokes when he finds out that it’s gone, instead, to an artist he’s never heard of. He goes to the opening anyway, out of spite, and a masochistic desire to see just what these brilliant works are that have outshone his own and stolen his rightful place in the gallery.

The paintings, when he finally sees them, are garish, gaudy, hideous mishmashes of bright, clashing colours and rounded, abstract forms, and Pitch could swear he spies _glitter_ mixed in with the acrylic paint on at least two of the canvases; he complains of the decline of the gallery’s selection criteria to the man next to him, only for the stranger to look up at Pitch and say, in a voice almost too soft to be heard over the elegant, expensive murmur and hum of the crowd, “Those paintings are mine.”

 

...

 

( _another for the Blood Red Blacksand 'verse_ )

Pitch has been plotting something, Sandy knows; his husband isn’t nearly as good at keeping secrets as he thinks he is, but he seems so earnest and excited about whatever he’s working on that Sandy gladly plays along, pretends not to notice, doesn’t go prying. Still, Sandy does notice enough to expect some sort of surprise, although, he has to admit, coming home from work to find his husband naked (save for wrapped white bandages at his wrists and throat) on the dark-wood dining room table, with an assortment of needles and syringes, scalpels, gauze, rubber tubing, and other assorted medical detritus arranged at the head of the table like an elaborate place setting, wasn’t something he’d even considered.

He opens his mouth to ask, but Pitch, smiling, interrupts him without a word; Sandy watches, rooted to the spot, as his husband unwinds the bandages from first one wrist, then the other, to reveal clear tubing taped down against his skin, connected to needles buried in the blue lines of veins; “I know you’d prefer to bite,” Pitch says, as Sandy struggles to catch his breath, “but I thought you’d appreciate a taste of my blood anyway.”

 

...

 

( _for[gretchensinister](http://gretchensinister.tumblr.com/)'s [North vs the 8000 AU](http://gretchensinister.tumblr.com/post/71388348900/north-vs-the-8000-mentions-of-pitch-sandy), a crossover with Hellboy_ )

It’s a feast.

The crowd below is just aware enough to know that something strange and momentous is happening, just aware enough to be riding the edge of unease, but just drugged enough on the peace and wellbeing and the sense of absolute rightness that has brought them here not to question what’s happening, not to fall into full-blown fear, only to soak in the wonderment and the weirdness and to stay open and receptive to every waking dream that the forces that have brought them here are sifting through their heads.

The Dreameater is delightedly leaping from body to body, trying each on in turn, flickering behind the eyes of every rounded golden shape in the hall, trying out different numbers and configurations of limbs as well as variations of face and height and hairstyle and history, while his companion the Fearspinner lurks around the edges of the room, tasting the fears and agonies of the gathered crowd like fine wines, taking them in for only a moment before spitting them out again; both know that this is only a game, a distraction, but it is so very nice to play.

 

...

 

"You’re lucky that I don’t _actually_ burst into flames in the sunlight,” Onyx says, or starts to say, but she only gets to “You’re lucky -” before Sandy grabs her into a smothering hug, surprising Onyx so much that it takes her several seconds to work out that she can hug back. She cautiously wraps her own arms around Sandy’s waist, lightly at first, and then, as Sandy shows no sign of releasing her any time soon, more tightly, feeling all her nervousness dissipate in the face of the reality of Sandy’s presence, warm and solid and real and smelling of honey and vanilla even in the sweltering heat, and squeezing like she’s scared that Onyx will evaporate if she lets go.

“ _You’re_ lucky I made it to the airport, the traffic was so ridiculous,” Sandy mutters, her voice muffled by the fact that her face is pressed into Onyx’s shoulder, and she pulls back reluctantly, catching hold of Onyx’s hand and staring at the other girl as though trying to memorize every line and angle of her face; it’s only after a long silence that Onyx realises she herself is staring just as hungrily, gripping Sandy’s hand just as tightly, just as stunned by the fact that Sandy is real and _here_ and that they can touch at last.

 

...

 

Sandie hadn’t even expected to be here; she hadn’t expected to leave the house, much less get dragged along with Aster and Nicola to “that great new gay bar that just opened downtown, you’ll love it, there’s no cover on Tuesdays, when was the last time you went out dancing, come on Sandie!”. Even after that onslaught, she’d been prepared to stay home, citing class tomorrow, but when Nicola had leaned down and looked her very seriously in the eye and said, “Sandie, when is last time you got laid?”, she’d known she was in trouble.

However, when an utterly gorgeous dark-haired and -skinned creature with legs that were longer than Sandie’s reading list for the semester marched up to the bar, threw herself down in Sandie’s lap, downed Sandie’s drink in one long gulp, and proceeded to wrap her arms around Sandie’s neck and refuse to let go, Sandie had to admit that coming out tonight was probably the best thing she’d done in a long, _long_ time.

 

...

 

It’s too dark, way out here in the middle of nowhere, and he’s forgotten his flashlight, but he couldn’t use it even if he had it with him, because both his hands are full, and the roll of carpet would be heavy enough even if it didn’t have that - that - that _thing_ inside it, and it’s too quiet, and there’s something rustling in the bushes up ahead there…

Sandy stops, stock-still, listening, but he doesn’t hear anything more; he goes to take a step forward, and suddenly, there’s a light, just a small pinprick in the vast darkness of the forest, but enough to reveal another person, tall and slim and covered in something dark and blotchy with something dark and bulky at his feet, something that looks suspiciously like a body. “Don’t kill me, I’m still a virgin!” Sandy whisper-shouts, dropping the roll of carpet and putting his hands in the air, and immediately curses himself for such stupid last words; the stranger lets out a low, sinister laugh, which stops abruptly when his flashlight beam falls on the carpet, which has unrolled just enough to let an outstretched arm fall free, and Sandy can’t help a sudden wild thought that maybe, just maybe, he might survive this encounter after all.

 

...

 

There’s something digging painfully into his hip where it rests on the bed, and Pitch shifts, with a gentle clatter of chains and baubles and the soft chiming of bangles against each other. The jewellery Sandy makes never sounds loud, never harsh, and it never tangles or catches on itself, even when Pitch wears it all at once and all against his naked skin, as he’s doing now.

A touch from Sandy’s small hand, and Pitch tilts his head back further, to allow Sandy better access to his lip with the needle; when Sandy had presented him with the little golden ring, with its dangling butterfly charm, he had explained that he’d though Pitch would prefer to shift his shape just a little to accommodate another piercing, but Pitch had insisted that they do it the human way instead, and the sting of the golden needle pushing through his skin, the sudden ashy, petrichor-tinted taste of his own blood on his tongue, and the sudden fire in the depths of Sandy’s eyes as he works the ring into place, all convince Pitch that he made the right decision.

 

...

 

Pitch knew he should have wondered more why a _castle_ was selling for bargain-basement prices, but as the sudden and very surprised heir to a small fortune from a now-defunct European dynasty that he hadn’t even known he was remotely connected to, it had seemed like the natural next step to buy back the family’s lost ancestral home and try to restore the ancient Norman castle.

His extravagant impulse buy had, however, come back to bite him when, the very first night in his new residence, he’d been woken by mysterious sounds from outside; he’d slipped out of bed, making a mental note that the first thing he would have done when he had the interior renovated was get better insulation, and the second thing would be having central heating installed, and hurried over to the window, only to rub his eyes in disbelief and blink several times, pinching himself in hopes that he would turn out to be dreaming.

The lagoon behind the castle was _glowing_ , a dim golden aura emanating from a large, vague shape just under the water, and as Pitch watched, a large head gently broke the surface; huge, liquid, surprisingly intelligent eyes found his, and, even though it was impossible to tell at such a distance, he could swear that the creature, whatever it was, _winked_.

 

...

 

"Oh, come _on_ ,” Pitch grumbled, as the child’s bedroom lit with a dim nightlight glow dissolved around him in gold, revealing a vast and glittering labyrinth laid out before him, “is this really necessary?”

The unimpressed look that Sandy gave him from under more-than-usually unruly and vertical blonde hair said, clearly and without room for argument, that it was.

"Say _one_ stupid thing about David Bowie,” Pitch muttered, brushing his rival’s flowing, tattered cloak away from his shoulders, and trying not to stare; the iconic costume looked a little different on someone about a third of the Thin White Duke’s height and almost spherical, but he had to admit that whatever mystical allure had accompanied the Goblin King’s character in the film, Sandy had in spades, ridiculous costume or no.

 

...

 

It started as a silly hobby, one Halloween’s boozy, adrenaline-fueled dare to spend an hour in a supposedly-haunted abandoned building turning into an overnight stay in said building with a voice recorder and significantly less booze, turning into joining a local ghost-hunting group, turning into a terrifying (if enlightening - it had, after all, proven that the things they were hunting for, and would end up hunting, were very real and very dangerous) encounter in an old sanatorium and, once safe outside, a frantic, relieved kiss. Paranormal phenomena had brought them together and, Sandy was determined, it was going to _keep_ them together, no matter how much Pitch was determined to mope and brood and generally avoid everyone now that he’d acquired a shiny new set of fangs.

He almost felt guilty calling Pitch to tell him that their services had been requested to clear out a coven of vampires that had started nesting in a nice, paranormal-friendly restaurant on the west side, but the lie was worth it to see the look on Pitch’s face when he realised that the vampires in question were not actually the pests he’d been led to believe, but were the owners of the restaurant, and had an impressive selection of blood types (donated, of course) in the wine cellar; “You little sneak,” Pitch said as he sat down across from Sandy, but the grin he wore made Sandy’s heart leap with a hope he’d feared he’d have to bury.

 

...

 

Pitch had seen a disgustingly twee post comparing online friends to illegally downloaded movies or video games - you didn’t get the physical copy, but you got all the great content - and, trite and pat as the sentiment was, he couldn’t help but think of Sandy when he saw it. The difference, of course, being that he wasn’t going to be deprived of the physical copy forever; they’d already made plans to meet up at a convention in September, and Pitch had gone into such a frenzy of planning and preparing that now all he had to do was decide what to wear when he finally got to meet his friend face-to-face.

He ended up in a plain black t-shirt and jeans, the airline having lost his luggage, and was quietly panicking about what kind of first impression he was going to make when a cold hand caught his elbow; the person he saw when he turned around was unmistakeable from Sandy’s descriptions of himself and the rare, heavily-filtered photo he’d posted, but Pitch hadn’t expected his friend to be quite so pale, or so transparent, or so unbounded by gravity, and suddenly all his own worries about making a good first impression flew out the window, driven out of his mind by a thousand questions about how he’d managed to make friends with a ghost.

 

...

 

Sandy’s been driven into a corner, and he knows, even as he swings out with the crowbar that’s been his trusty companion since he woke up to find a rotting corpse trying to break his window, that this is it for him; there are just too many of them, and only one of him, and nowhere left to run -

He’s not prepared for the door he’s backed up against, the door he’d thought he’d be able to break the lock off of and then just hadn’t had _time_ , to suddenly swing inwards and for someone with freezing cold hands and a deathly blueish pallor to their handsome face to yank Sandy inside and slam the door behind him; he’s even _less_ prepared for the person he’s just about decided is one of the walking dead to turn to him and say, “That won’t hold them off for long, we’re going to have to run.”

Obviously Sandy’s staring, because the stranger grimaces, leaning against the door as muffled thumps and scraping sounds mingled with horrible moans begin to emanate from the other side; “Hello,” he sighs, “I’m Pitch, yes, I’m dead, and this is all a lot more complicated than you think, but explanations can wait until I finish saving your life.”

 

...

 

Their schedules might be compatible, but their interests definitely were not; the Lord knew, through long experience with dreams, the sort of things that most people thought of when they thought of romance, and the things his darling thought of as romantic were…not those. If she liked roses, it was only once they were dead on their stalks, and she was more interested in the nightmares of children than a fancy box of chocolates.

Still, a gentleman had to court a lady _somehow_ , do something just to let her know how much he cared, and rounding up an entire bouquet of mandrake and belladonna was worth it for the eerie, crescent-moon smile she gave him when he proudly presented it to her, and the chilly kiss she pressed to the very tip of his nose.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pacific Rim AU, for a prompt.

The mess, he could almost tolerate. The stench of decaying ammonia, unpleasant, but a job hazard when one was working in such close proximity to the kaiju attack capital of the world, let alone working cheek-by-jowl with the world’s most pre-eminent kaiju biologist. Even the occasional _splatter_ on his side of the line was bearable, if he reminded himself, over and over again, that it was in the service of saving the world.

 

Yes, all things considered, Pitch would almost be a tolerable lab partner. If only it weren’t for the _music_.

Sandy would have understood if the man had wanted to play something to distract himself, to take his mind off of his sordid occupation, but _no_. Instead, Pitch kept up a constant stream of positively _morbid_ tunes pouring from the stereo in the corner, everything from funereal dirges to pounding synthesizer accompanied by growling lyrics about robbing graves. To which he inevitably _sang along_.

It was an otherwise unremarkable day when Sandy decided, on the spur of the moment, that he’d had _enough_ of Pitch’s choice of aural assault, and removed the stereo. Pitch arrived late, as usual, humming as he snapped a pair of elbow-length rubber gloves into place, preparing for a day of chopping corpses to bits.

And stopped.

"Sandy?"

Sandy didn’t turn away from his computer simulation.

"Sandy, did you move the stereo?"

Faintly-glowing manta rays flapped past the head of a creature that, if you squinted, might _almost_ look like a dinosaur. The ominous silence from Pitch’s side of the lab stretched out until Sandy had to bite his tongue to keep from turning around and signing exactly what it was he thought of Pitch’s taste in music.

And then, finally, the sound of footsteps, retreating quickly towards the freezer at the back of the lab. Sandy blinked. _Surely_ Pitch wasn’t just going to leave it at -

The familiar smell of quickly-defrosting kaiju hit Sandy’s nose at the same time as the door hit the wall, and Pitch shuffled back across the lab. Something was different, though, and Sandy strained his ears, unable to detect just what had put him out of sorts.

It took him a full five minutes to realise that Pitch was _humming_. Softly, yes, but growing louder by the second, minor keys and jarring intervals reproducing the music Sandy had deprived him of. When Sandy whirled to glare at Pitch, the biologist simply smirked, raising one impossibly-pale eyebrow, and started _singing_ the ghoulish little tune. “ _There’s a grave robber at large, ripping bodies from hallowed ground -_ ”

Sandy slipped down from his stool, crossing his arms as he marched across the line separating their halves of the lab. He stopped directly in front of Pitch, glaring daggers at the biologist, who, without taking his eyes from Sandy’s, and without ceasing to _sing_ , carefully and deliberately dropped the specimen he was holding.

A splatter of something wet and cold smacked Sandy in the cheek, and he was sure he felt his jaw drop. Right. It was past time he put an end to this, once and for _all_.

“ _Desecrate those who rest in peace, there’s money to be ma_ mmmmF -“

Pitch’s song was cut abruptly short when Sandy grabbed him by the collar and yanked him down into a ferocious kiss.


	18. Chapter 18

Pitch didn’t understand why her sisters were so curious about the world above, where the blinding sun would sear their eyes and dry their luxurious scales, where the sands would burn their delicate skin and the too-thin air would suffocate them slowly. She didn’t understand their fascination with the ships that drifted slowly overhead, huge and unstoppable and bringing only death with nets and harpoons and great heavy anchors falling from impossible heights. She could see no point in following them up to the sun-bathed rocks, to sing to the sailors on those deadly ships, to lure them onto the reefs just to steal kisses from the sailors and gold and jewels from the cargo holds.

It was, ironically, only once she started to explore the darkest depths of the trenches along the ocean floor that she finally began to understand what it was about gold that drew her sisters’ eyes, what it was about kisses that enraptured them so, what it was about the brilliant glow of the yellow sun that made her sisters so eager to drink it in even when it left them burned. Pitch had to say, though, that she had found a far greater prize than any of them could have ever dreamed of - Sandy’s gold was so much brighter, so much warmer, than the cold hard glimmer of the coins and diadems that Pitch’s sisters prized, her kisses sweeter and wilder than the desperate gasps of drowning men, and her soft glow, the golden light that let her see in the crushingly dark depths, was kinder and so much more beautiful than the sun could ever be.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a prompt: "Manny tell the guardians he is going to make Pitch and Sandy get marry so Pitch wil not be lonely or sad, guardians think it will be like putting a cat and dog on a bag (except North, North is thrilled) pitch and sandy are actually happily excited"

"What is this?"

Sandy, never one to be discouraged easily, only held the tiny golden sand box with the tiny golden _not_ -sand ring in it a little higher over his head, so that it was directly under Pitch’s nose. The Boogeyman had to cross his eyes to see it, and the effect was so disorienting that he had to look away, choosing to focus on Sandy’s radiant grin instead. “Yes, I can see that it’s a ring. Rings can have any number of symbolic meanings, little man. Which one are you referring to?”

Sandy’s grin turned into an exasperated scowl, but only for a second, that smile bubbling up again almost as though he couldn’t keep it contained. Bells formed over his head, ringing silently as a ribbon unscrolled over them, tiny dreamsand doves picking up the curling edges of the ribbon. Pitch stared at it without the slightest hint of a clue for a long moment, before an almost painful hope swelled in his chest, stuck in his throat, leaving him unable to breathe for what felt like an eternity. Pitch struggled to tamp it down, puncture it, batter it into submission, but he only succeeded in recovering his voice. “I’m sorry, Sandman, but I must have a grain of sand in my eye. It looked like you just _proposed_ to me.”

 

Sandy only nodded enthusiastically, his glow brightening to the point where he was almost painful for Pitch to look at. And, from somewhere in the cavernous depths of his underground lair, an echoing, off-key rendition of ‘Here Comes the Bride’. For the space of a breath, Pitch thought, crazily, that Sandy had somehow trained his dream-creatures to sing (badly), before he realised - Sandy came with his own band of travelling clowns.

"Oh _no_ ,” Pitch muttered, as a blast of icy wind announced the arrival of the youngest of the Guardians, proudly belting out, “TRIPPED ON A BA-NA-NA PEEEEEEL AND WENT FOR A RIIIIIIIDE”. Jack Frost landed lightly beside Sandy, his grin wide and white and most accurately described as ‘shit-eating’. “So, you give it to him yet, Sandy?”

Sandy, strangely, did _not_ look excited to see his friend and fellow goody-two-shoes, if the short, impatient way that he gestured to the box in his hand was anything to go by. Jack raised both eyebrows in a look of mock surprise, glancing up at Pitch with a hint of poorly-concealed mirth. “He said no, huh? Well, too bad, so sad, we’ll just have to leave Tall Dark and Mopey to his pity party.”

Sandy shook his head, stamping one foot soundlessly on the cracked, weathered stone floor. He gestured sharply to the ring, and waved a tiny dreamsand moon into being over his head. Pitch felt his bubble of excited, disbelieving hope abruptly burst, leaving him to plummet. This was all that - that meddling _rock’s_ idea? He should have known that Sandy would never willingly choose something like this.

"If you two are _quite_ finished with your little _joke_ ,” he hissed, but he didn’t have a chance to finish his sentence, because with a _pop_ of displaced air and a spiral of _terribly_ undignified rainbow colours and lights, the other three Guardians tumbled out into Pitch’s lair _._

The fairy was the first to recover, darting at Pitch so quickly that he reflexively threw up an arm to protect his face. He remembered what had happened the last time she’d come at him like that, and he had no desire to earn another quarter. Luckily, Tooth stopped just short of physical violence, instead waving a threatening finger in Pitch’s face. “I hope you know that if you take this as an opportunity to take advantage of Sandy -“

"Please, Tooth! Sandy is grown…being, he can take care of himself," North boomed jovially in the background, brushing imaginary dust from his red coat. "Besides, I am thinking that Sandy _hopes_ advantage will be taken, eh?” This was accompanied by a wink at the Sandman, whose cheeks instantly turned a most becoming shade of sunset orange, and the loud, exaggerated groans of everyone else in the room.

"Oi, North, mental image _not_ appreciated,” Bunny complained, fixing Pitch with a glare that, Pitch felt, should almost have set him aflame. “Just because he volunteered when Manny thought it’d be a good idea to stick one of us with _this_ blighter doesn’t mean -“

"Here comes the bride, all dressed in whiiiite -"

The sudden bite of cold at the small of his back made Pitch jump, only to find Frost smirking up at him with that _infernal_ staff of his pressed against Pitch’s robe, the bottom of which was frozen stiff and, yes, _white_ with frost. Pitch snarled and snatched the garment away, whirling to stalk away into the shadows, only to find himself face to face with the little golden author of these miseries. He was about to snap at Sandy to _get out of his lair_ and take the Guardians with him, when he realised that the Sandman looked almost…apologetic.

That was before the ball of dreamsand hit Pitch in the face and he fell through a warm, soft, comforting dark into a dream of green and gold and swarms of brilliant butterflies.

…

The first thing he knew, he was lying on something soft and deliciously warm, and an absolutely _amazing_ smell was wafting towards him from somewhere nearby. It was the last that coaxed Pitch to open his eyes, and then promptly to shut them again when he discovered that he was lying abed in Dreamland.

"So now you’ve resorted to kidnapping," he groaned, still not opening his eyes, halfway hoping that when he eventually did Dreamland’s soft golden curves would have melted away and left him alone in the dark of his own lair, where he could snatch a little peace and quiet before having to go toe-to-toe with the Guardians for the next round. "Why go to all this trouble for a marriage you’re only being forced into by that miserable old lump in the sky, with your worst and most hated enemy?"

Pitch couldn’t see Sandy’s frown, but he felt it, in the sudden dip in temperature, the way the mattress grew firmer and slightly less comfortable underneath him. Reluctantly, he opened his eyes, to see Sandy setting aside a tray laden with sweets the likes of which Pitch hadn’t seen in centuries. The Sandman was frowning, but it seemed more sad than angry.

"Well?" Pitch demanded, trying to puncture the silence that fell on him like a huge, comfortable eiderdown. Sandy just shook his head, sitting down on the bed beside Pitch, and shifting over so that his warm little body pressed softly against the angles of the Boogeyman’s form. Pitch knew he should shove the dreamweaver away, that this could only be a sham, but, well, Sandy was so very warm, and so very soft, and Pitch couldn’t bring himself to push him away just yet.

He was almost drifting off again when a small finger poked him in the shoulder. Pitch shrugged it away, but it returned, insistent, prodding him until he cracked an eye open and glared up at Sandy. “ _What_.”

Sandy, very deliberately, conjured a moon shape. Pitch sighed, and was halfway through “I _know_ what the moon told you to do” when Sandy, equally deliberately, drew a large X through the shape with two fingers. The X flashed twice, and the whole thing dissolved, replaced by a tiny golden representation of the Sandman himself. Sandy waved towards it, making sure that Pitch was watching, and then conjured a tiny balloon over its head. He blew softly on the balloon, and it floated up, up, to where another stylized moon-shape hung.

Pitch was aware that his jaw was hanging open.

“ _Sanderson_ ,” he breathed. “You sent him a wish?”

Sandy nodded, the faintest hint of worry in his eyes as he bit his bottom lip.

Pitch couldn’t have helped the smile that spread slowly across his face if he’d wanted to. “So you convinced the Man in the Moon to tell the Guardians that one of them had to marry _me_ , just so that you could volunteer and your friends couldn’t get angry about it? That’s positively _diabol_ _ical_.”

Sandy blushed, again, and Pitch reflected that he looked even more delectable than any pastry he might possibly be compared to. Without another ‘word’, Sandy reached into the fold of his pyjamas, pulling out the small golden box he’d presented to Pitch at the beginning of all this mess. He slid off the bed, bobbing to one knee in midair, and, blushing even more brightly than before, slowly opened the lid.

Pitch just managed not to lick his lips.

"I’ll think about it, old man," he said, feeling as though his smile would split his head in two. "But you’re going to have to court me first."


	20. Chapter 20

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful maiden who was very proud. More proud than beautiful, actually, but these stories always start with a beauty. The maiden is never worth redeeming if she isn’t beautiful, or her pride is unjustifiable, since what could she have to be proud of if not her fine face, her bright eyes, her high cheekbones, her tall, slender figure, her long, raven’s-wing hair?

 

Whatever it was, the boys of her village could not fathom. They heaped praises on her face, her figure, especially upon her hair, but none of them touched upon the source of her pride, and she would have none of them. So they told her that she was too proud, that it marred her beauty, and before long, there were none left who would have her either.

This suited the maiden perfectly well. “If no one wants me here,” she said, “then I will go out into the world, and I will find someone who knows why I am proud. And when I find them, that is when I will marry; then, and not before.”

So the maiden went out into the world, with her head high and her shoulders straight, with her best travelling cloak on, and her raven’s-wing hair tumbling, cascading like nightfall behind her. She walked and she walked, through kingdoms and wilderness, right across the map, but everywhere she went, men would ask her for her hand, paying compliments to her fine features, her bright eyes, her stature, and, of course, to her beautiful hair. Nowhere, in any of the places she travelled to, did she find anyone who knew why she was proud, and she grew very tired and wished never to be called beautiful again.

And then, at one inn where she stopped to rest her feet, she met an innkeeper’s daughter who whispered to her the story of how to find me.

There is a witch in the woods, they say, although hardly anyone has seen her. The woods are deep and tangled, and will lead you astray as quick as you please, so that the path you set out on may not be the one that you follow out. The woods will turn you away if you are not wanted, or they will swallow you, never to be seen or heard from again.

Some folk will tell you that the story of the witch in the woods is only that - a story. They are absolutely right.

Other folk will tell you that if your heart is pure, if your will is strong, and if your want is great, then the woods will take you to the witch at their heart, and she will cure your ills - for a price. They, too, are absolutely right.

The proud maiden set out on the path into the forest at noon. By nightfall, she was lost, her feet having carried her along the winding path so far from anything she knew that she could never have found her own way out again.

"Good," she said aloud, "if I must live out the rest of my days in this tangle of brush, at least I know how to feed myself and clothe myself. I will not want, and it is better to be alone that to be amongst people who misunderstand and ill appreciate me."

No sooner had the words crossed her lips, though, than the path took her around a corner, between two great bowed trees, and there, in the middle of a small clearing, lit by a single shaft of sunlight, she saw my home. For a moment, fear stopped her in her tracks, but the proud maiden pushed it aside, strode up my garden path, and knocked loud and clear three times on my door.

The stories say that I do not speak to those who seek me. They are absolutely right. It drove the proud maiden near to madness, at first. She asked her boon of me, asked me to make her ugly, make her dull, make her plain, asked me to take her raven’s-wing hair as payment. I only shook my head, though, I will admit, I loved to look upon her hair as it shone in both sunlight and moonlight. Instead, I set her to do my chores.

There are a thousand thousand stories, and some will tell you that when an old woman in the woods who is almost certainly a witch sets you to do her chores, she is testing the purity of your heart and the kindness in your soul. That may be true; after all, it is in the story. But equally true is the fact that I am an old woman, and I needed my chores done.

For weeks she worked, complaining all the time, but her work was good and my little house was soon spotless, my little garden weeded and seeded, my chimney cleaned, my clothing washed, my socks darned, my logpile replenished, my dinners prepared. In return, I taught her what I knew of potions and poisons, things to heal and things to kill, things to make folks dream and things to make them sleep forever. On the last day of the third month, though, the proud maiden came to me as I sat dozing by the fire, and demanded to know when her payment would come. When would she no longer be wanted only for her face, her figure, her raven’s-wing hair? When would the unwanted suitors see the source of her pride? When, she demanded, would she earn her reward?

Soon, I promised her. Be patient. Be patient, be kind, be pure of heart and sturdy of mind, follow all the rules of these tales and your reward will come at last.

The next day, two young men wandered into my wood.

A golden stag led them in, its crown of antlers impossibly huge and bright, its sleek coat the colour of sunlight and butter and the wealth of kings. It quickly vanished, though, in the unfamiliar terrain, and the young man - the young _prince_ , I should say, he is always a prince - and his friend discovered they were hopelessly lost, with night falling around them.

They walked, and they walked, and still they walked, until abruptly, the path took them around a corner, between two great bowed trees, and there, in the middle of a small clearing, lit by a single shaft of moonlight, they saw my home. Both of them, of course, knew the stories of the witch in the woods, and they were frightened, but both knew that, if they had come to the witch’s home, it was because she wanted them there. She wanted something of them, and she would not let them go until she had it. And so, with their hearts in their mouths, they tied their horses to the two bowed trees and walked up my garden path, to knock three times at my door.

I was dozing, dreaming, in my chair, when they knocked, and I had little care to go and greet them. At a sign from me, my proud maid shifted herself from her seat by the fire, and rose to answer the door.

Three months of work at my behest, three months of wisdom poured into her ear, had taken their toll. No longer was the proud maiden the same village girl who had knocked three times at my door. The proud maiden was now ever covered in a fine grey layer of soot and ash and dust; her fair white hands turned coarse and calloused from hard work; her slender form hidden under her clothing, now blackened with more soot and little more than rags; her beautiful hair tied back and hidden under a cloth. But her cheekbones were as high as ever, and her eyes, her eyes glittered like twin stars in the night sky.

When she opened the door to see the prince and his companion, they looked up, up, into those glittering eyes, and they were both struck dumb with fear. Neither noticed her cheekbones. Neither noticed her hair. Both took careful note of her sharp, sharp teeth.

When she asked them, “Why have you come here and what do you want?” both fell on their knees and begged to be released from the wood, allowed to go back out into the world. They called her ‘mother’ and treated her as royalty, and when she returned to me after they had left she asked why they had treated her as though _she_ were the witch.

Then I took her to the looking glass in the hall and let her see herself, wearing the reward she had earned, burned away to the slender shadow of a self that was proud of its own darkness, and I told her, “You _are_ the witch. You know my secrets, you have my powers, and this world will see you only as beautiful no longer.”

Then she pulled me close, and laid fierce kisses and hot tears all over my face, and begged me not to send her away now that she had earned her reward. I had never expected her to stay, but once she asked - but that’s a lie, and while I might tell stories, I never tell a _li_ _e_. I wanted her to stay, and the moment she asked me if she might was the moment I had been hoping for all along.

I took her in, into my home, into my chamber, and there, for the first time in the three months that she had been there, she let me unwrap her beautiful raven’s-wing hair.

We are still there, in the woods, in a little old house at the very centre. And if your heart is pure, if your will is strong, and if your want is great, then the woods will take you to the witch at their heart.

You have your choice of two.


	21. Chapter 21

"So _all_ of the letters come to you?” Jack asked, holding up a sheet of pink construction paper covered in large, shaky, horrendously-misspelt words in green wax crayon. “Even the ones that they don’t actually _send_?”

North nodded thoughtfully, opening a sealed envelope and frowning at the careful writing on the piece of neatly-folded paper inside. “All letters come to me. Is part of Christmas magic.”

"Even ones that aren’t actually addressed to Santa Claus?" Jack set the pink paper aside with a fond smile and turned to another letter. His smile grew wider and more mischievous. "Ooh, I guess the answer to that is _yes_. This one’s just addressed to - _"_ His eyebrows shot up nearly into his hairline, and he bounced backwards to rest on one of the mail-sorting tables. “ _Oh._ ”

 

North stopped his perusal of the carefully itemized list in his hands in order to look over at Jack, who had begun to shake with silent giggles. “Jack?”

"Wow, North. Didn’t know you had it in you."

"Jack, this is not funny." North made a grab for the letter, but Jack easily dodged, hopping up on top of his staff, cackling at a particular passage.

“ _Somebody_ wants a visit from Santa Baby, _ooh oooh_ -” Jack’s teasing was cut abruptly short when North deliberately bumped against the staff, sending Jack tumbling harmlessly into a pile of unsorted letters and the love letter floating down into North’s hands. He scanned the elegant calligraphy quickly, ignoring Jack’s groans, a thoughtful look appearing on his face.

"This is not mine," he said, at last, just as Jack’s head popped up from the drift of letters.

"What? Come on, it was here with the rest of the letters." Jack looked around, assessing. "I wonder if you could go sledding in here."

"Jack! This is not addressed to me. Therefore, is not letter to Santa, and does not belong to me." North tapped the offending letter with the back of one hand, as though that solved the problem. And maybe it did, for _him_ , but for Jack it only increased the mystery.

"But then who’s getting soppy love letters that sound like they came from Lord Byron?" He _remembered_ Lord Byron. _Nobody_ wanted a love letter from Lord Byron.

The twinkle in North’s eye turned mischievous, although Jack never would have guessed he was joking by the casual tone of his voice. “Well, maybe it is _you_ who is having admirer, hm?”

"What? _No!”_ Maybe it’d be nice having someone romantically interested in him, but the author of _this_ letter? Jack couldn’t help a shudder. “Not a _chance_. This guy - or girl - or whatever - sounds like a _total_ creep.”

"Who’s a total creep?"

Both North and Jack turned to the door of the mailroom, to see Tooth waving, a smile on her face. “I just dropped by to - oh, what’s that? Let me see!” In half a second she had zipped across the room, snatched up the letter, and devoured half of the lines. Her cheeks grew pinker and pinker, and she finally stopped, drawing back from the letter. “Oh. Oh my. That’s - that’s -“

"Creepy, right?" Jack asked. "That stuff about wanting to _devour_ their lover, there -“

"It’s _so romantic_ ,” Tooth sighed, and both North and Jack exchanged a worried look. “Isn’t it?” she asked, worriedly, apparently aware for the first time that she had an audience.

"Yeahhh," Jack answered, finally. "Sure. Hey, if you think that’s romantic, maybe it’s for you?"

Tooth actually _squeaked_. She clapped a hand to her mouth immediately afterwards, but her smile was clear in her eyes. “Oh, no no no, not _me_! I don’t - it’s not for either of you?” Her gaze flicked from Jack, who was pretty sure that his face betrayed his disgust, to North, who just seemed amused by the whole thing.

"No, Toothie, is not ours."

"Hm." Tooth stole another glance at the paper, her cheeks reddening again. "Do you think Bunny -"

"No."

"No."

"You’re right." She bit her bottom lip, scanning the heavy, old-fashioned script one more time. "I wonder who _sent_ it?”

"Who do we know who is _really creepy_?” Jack suggested, and Tooth shot him a glare.

"It was _sweet_. A pure declaration of utter devotion!”

"Tooth, they were talking about _eating_ their lover. Any way you slice it, that’s creepy.”

"Still," Tooth sighed. "I wonder how it wound up _here_ , if it’s not for any of us?”

…

In a shadowy, dusty corner behind the mail chute, Pitch Black tried very hard not to make a sound, hoping not to get caught receiving a very enthusiastic thank-you from Sandy for the beautiful letters he’d sent.


	22. Chapter 22

Technically, the strands of dreamsand were part of Sandy. _Technically_. He had to be connected enough to them that he could send them where they needed to go, tell when the sleeping child was about to awake so that he could withdraw the dream without being too abrupt, and yet not be so attached that the dream couldn’t function without his constant attention, couldn’t shape itself from the child’s imagination. The dreams that Sandy delivered were only _technically_ a part of him; in practice, they were seperate entities, designed to operate on their own regardless of what their weaver was thinking about.

Unfortunately, design and application didn’t always go hand in hand.

The thin lips that were currently pressed to his were very warm and _very_ nice, but also _very_ distracting, and it was only when something that looked like the mutant offspring of some deep-sea monster swam past and bumped into Sandy that he realised just how badly his distraction was affecting his carefully-crafted dreams. Sandy pulled away from his tall, dark, and vaguely sharklike paramour to stare sadly at the misshapen dream-creature, shaking his head and wondering how many others had met a similar fate.

A hot breath ghosted over the nape of his neck, and Pitch’s lips pressed softly against the place where Sandy’s skull met his neck, jagged teeth lightly grazing the sensitive skin and sending little electric shocks running all down Sandy’s spine. He opened his mouth in a silent gasp and the dream-creature, frightened, waved a few tentacles and jetted abruptly backwards in a flurry of gold sand ‘ink’.

Sandy swatted Pitch away, setting his cloud to chase after the little creature, only to be brought up short by soft nibble around the outer shell of his ear that turned his knees to jelly. “Let it go,” Pitch whispered, low and soft and syrupy, and Sandy had to forcibly gather his wits together to pull away, pointing after the little creature and conjuring an image of tentacles rising from beneath a small child’s bed.

He should have remembered who he was talking to. Pitch merely shrugged, smiling like a Jack-o’-lantern. “It sounds like a good idea to _me_ ,” he said, and Sandy furiously crossed the image out, waving a scolding finger. The moon swirled into shape over his head, and Pitch frowned, scooping Sandy into his arms and kissing him breathless until the little dreamsand moon crumbled into incoherent particles.

…

The next morning, more children than usual bored their parents silly by relating their strange dreams at the breakfast table. _  
_


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the Blood Red Blacksand AU, where Pitch is a cannibalistic serial killer and Sandy is his psychologist and murderous mentor.

"You seem upset."

Pitch’s shrug was tight, controlled, forcibly nonchalant. Sandy _tsk_ ed and placed a small hand over his. “You don’t need to pretend with me. That’s not how this relationship works. And I can’t help you if you’re always hiding from me, can I?”

Pitch let out a long, shuddering breath, but he relaxed, the tension bleeding out of his shoulders. Sandy patted his hand reassuringly. “Why are you upset, Pitch?”

 

"I - I mentioned that I was up for promotion?" Pitch asked, although it seemed he was having some difficulty choosing the words and letting them out. Sandy, sensing that an interruption now could cause him to close up again, merely nodded encouragingly. "I didn’t get it. Some upstart -" He broke off, drawing back, staring at the framed Rorschach print hanging on Sandy’s wall.

Sandy gave him nearly a minute before gently trying to broach the subject again. “It must be upsetting, not to get what you want -“

"What I _deserve_!” Pitch exploded, and Sandy fought down a grin. _Now_ they were getting somewhere. “I’ve been there far longer than Frost! I’m the one who helped _build_ that company! It doesn’t make sense, that  _he_ gets all the recognition and I - I just want -” He stuttered to a halt, breathing hard, but Sandy suspected that he wasn’t quite done. Sandy nodded, and Pitch took a deep breath, letting it out in a long, steady gust. “I just want what they have. Money, prestige - I can acquire those myself, but how - _how_ \- does one make oneself _likeable_? _Charismatic_? How does one gain their skills? I’ve gone to all of the leadership conferences and spoken to every therapist and they all say that it’s something you can learn, something you can cultivate, but no one ever tells me _how_ …” He trailed off, brushing a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair angrily. And then, just when Sandy was about to attempt to prompt him again, Pitch stopped stock-still and squinted at the Rorschach blot. “Isn’t a bloody heart a rather morbid thing to have on the wall of a psychiatrist’s office? I’d think it would upset your patients”

"It’s a Rorschach test," Sandy said, as calmly as he could, though he almost wanted to clap his hands in glee. "They were meant to reflect an individual’s subconscious thoughts and desires. They’ve been mostly discredited now, of course. I keep it around as a decoration."

The smile that crossed Pitch’s face was humourless. “So what does it say about me that the first thing I see is an anatomically correct model of the human heart with all four chambers pumping blood?”

"Why don’t you tell me?" Sandy asked, barely able to keep his voice level. "You know yourself better than I do."

Pitch fixed him with a long, unblinking stare. “Sometimes I wonder,” he muttered.

Sandy tried to pretend he hadn’t heard, with little success. “Tell me what it means,” he said, instead, a smile growing on his face with every passing second, unable to remain contained.

Clearly, Pitch saw something in that smile that Sandy had thought he’d kept hidden, because when he next spoke, he sounded much calmer, more in control than he had just moments before. “There are places,” he said, almost conversationally, “where people still practice human sacrifice, did you know that?”

Sandy nodded, not sure where this was going but already liking it.

"They offer up the best and the strongest that they - or their enemies - have to offer, in hopes of appeasing their gods," Pitch continued, with a glance at Sandy that made Sandy want to shift in his seat. "The Aztecs, for example, used to kill their sacrifices by removing their hearts. They chose the most appealing sacrifices so that their strength or their beauty or whatever it was that made them attractive would flow into the god and nourish them." He turned to face Sandy, and his eyes were dark, his smile unguarded and predatory, _beautiful_. “If it could nourish a _god_ , Sandy…well, what about you and me?”

The professional thing to do, Sandy reflected, would be to acknowledge this feeling, to acknowledge that it wasn’t normal, to help his patient develop coping mechanisms and perhaps write him a prescription, to turn him around and make him a productive member of society. But this wasn’t just _his patient_. This was _Pitch_. Pitch, who was absolutely _breathtaking_ like this.

Sandy didn’t think he had it in him to destroy something so wild, so pure, so _perfect_.

"Tell me more," he said, and Pitch must have noticed the way he licked his lips.


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the Twelve Days of Blacksand on tumblr.

**Day 1: Decorations and Lights**

 

Sandy would never admit it to his fellow Guardians (mostly because it would get him embroiled in North and Bunny’s ongoing feud, something he avoided at all costs), but Christmas was likely his favourite holiday. True, it was often harder than usual to get the children to fall asleep on Christmas Eve, but the anticipation and the sheer weight of possibility in the air made for the most fantastical dreams once they finally _did_ shut their eyes. And it was also usually the longest night of the year, or close to it.

What no one ever seemed to consider was that the Sandman, for all that he was soft and sweet and quite literally made up of light, thrived mostly in darkness. After all, most people did the bulk of their sleeping at night, rather than in daylight, and no one knew better than Sandy how the darkness could be a perfect canvas for the imagination.

No one, that is, except perhaps for Pitch Black.

Sandy wasn’t really surprised to see the shadowy spirit prowling through dark streets, causing cold winds to howl down chimneys and bang branches against windows, Christmas lights to flicker and wreaths to rattle against doors. The aura of possibility that shone like the halo around lights in heavy snow could as easily be twisted to terror as to wonder, and, after all, it was the longest night of the year. Still, Sandy bobbed down to make sure that Pitch wasn’t up to something. He hadn’t forgotten what had happened the last time they’d all assumed that Pitch was no longer a threat.

Pitch glanced up at the sudden spill of golden light on snow, and a scowl crossed his face. “Sandman. Come to run me off your precious tykes?”

Sandy shook his head, glancing around as he did so. He didn’t often have much cause to come this close to the ground as part of his nightly routine, and he’d almost forgotten how quiet the world could be under a layer of snow, how bold and yet how gentle the tiny electric lights strung on trees and along roofs could look against the soft dark of a winter night. They reminded him of the candles of previous ages, and he said as much.

Pitch responded with a puzzled look. “I suppose so,” he eventually concurred. “Is that really why you’re here? To look at Christmas lights?”

Sandy shrugged. It wasn’t as though it was keeping him from doing his job. And they did look very nice.

"Yes, they must really love you," Pitch muttered, and Sandy snapped back to attention, casting a question mark out of his swirling sands. "What, you haven’t noticed?"

The question mark grew bigger and began to dance.

Pitch frowned again, but this time it looked thoughtful, rather than angry. “You really _haven’t_ noticed? I thought it was the most obvious thing in the world.”

Sandy firmly planted both hands on his hips, glaring at Pitch, whose lips quirked into a hint of a smirk. “Well, who else do you know who decks the night with strands of tiny golden lights?”

 

...

 

**Day 2: The Season of Ugly Sweaters**

 

Sandy isn’t like any of the popular depictions of vampires - small and round and peachy rather than tall and gaunt and pale, more given to excitement and joy than brooding and angst, and, perhaps most notably, possessing not a single article of black clothing. Or, at least, Pitch has never seen him wearing black, save for on lazy mornings when Sandy curls up in a borrowed houserobe and nothing else, the black strange and striking against his skin, making him look almost golden in comparison. 

Pitch recreates the image in his mind, the room dim with the blinds pulled shut against the early morning sunlight, a few molten rays still leaking through and casting bright bars across the bedsheets, the floorboards. Sandy naked on the bed, save for the robe he’s stolen from the back of the bathroom door, far too long for him, puddled around him on the sheets and framing soft curves and creamy skin. Lovely, completely unselfconscious, basking in the luxury of nothing to do, nowhere to be, and a willing lover close at hand.

Somehow, Pitch can’t quite reconcile the mental image with the Sandy who, even now, is spinning in a slow circle to show off the full horror of the monstrosity he calls a sweater.

Sandy stops, facing Pitch, and raises both arms with a jingle of tiny silver bells, the better to display the garish, multicoloured pattern of tiny reindeer, elves, and - Pitch squints - are those meant to be nutcrackers? Or perhaps toy soldiers? Whatever they are, their clashing colours are making his head spin.

"Very…nice," he manages, blinking furiously and hoping that he won’t get a headache from this, knowing that he probably will. "Did you knit that yourself?"

Sandy nods enthusiastically, before reaching down and picking up the tastefully wrapped package that he’d brought with him, his elated grin turning mischievous. Pitch doesn’t need to unwrap it to know what must be in it, and that Sandy won’t leave him alone until he puts it on.

He shuts his eyes for a second, and offers a silent prayer to whatever gods might be listening that no one he knows will see him in his very own ugly sweater.

 

...

 

**Day 3: Under the Mistletoe**

( _another one set in the universe of[The Doors of Perception](http://archiveofourown.org/works/656973/chapters/1197369)_ )

 

The old house was packed to the rafters, six different conversations going on at once, noise and heat filling every room. Every once in a while one of Jack and Tooth’s brood would tear by, screaming, and it was best to make as much room as possible for the five or six children who would shortly follow, waving a handful of mistletoe.

Amidst the chaos, Kozzy had still somehow managed to find a dark, quiet  corner, which was where Sandy finally found him when Bunny had been drawn into an argument over coloured pencils, thereby ending their conversation. “Hey there, beautiful,” Sandy purred, and his husband turned, giving him a delighted smile. “What are you doing sulking in a corner all alone?”

"First of all, not sulking," Kozzy answered, raising a finger in mock-reprimand. "Much as I love our greatly extended family, they _can_ get rather…overwhelming.”

"So you’re hiding in a dark corner."

"It’s a tactical retreat. I’m regrouping."

"Mistletoe!"

Both Kozzy and Sandy turned at the excited shout, to see Resa, breathless and red-faced, holding a sprig of the green plant triumphantly aloft. “Now you have to _kiss_!” she announced, barely holding back giggles.

Sandy looked up at Kozzy, whose grin wasn’t entirely innocent. “But you’re holding the mistletoe over _your_ head,” he said to Resa, whose look of dawning horror and hasty attempt to backtrack did her no good. Both Kozzy and Sandy leaned down, and each pressed a kiss to one of Resa’s cheeks as she squirmed and shrieked delightedly. As soon as they released her, she dashed off, laughing, leaving the sprig of mistletoe behind.

Kozzy knelt down and picked it up, dangling it playfully over Sandy’s head. “Well, how about that kiss, old man?”

It didn’t take long for them to entirely forget about the mistletoe.

 

...

 

**Day 4: Christmas Fruitcake**

 

 

There were a great many things that humanity had invented during their time on their little blue planet that delighted and entertained the Sandman, things both useful and useless. Little gadgets or monstrous creations that freed up more time to daydream with their fine efficiency, or things so specific in purpose as to be utterly useless, machines that could only have been conjured up in a dream. It wasn’t only the mechanical that he marvelled at them for, however; no, mankind was an endless font of ideas, good, bad, and silly, and Sandy loved to watch, to see what they’d come up with next.

He especially loved the sweet things that they baked and cooked and froze, confections that even he himself couldn’t have dreamed up, although there were a few flavour combinations that baffled him. Japan’s penchant for putting savoury things into ice cream, for instance, or Scandinavia’s insistence that something as bitter and sour as black liquorice could be qualified as a _sweet_. But there was nothing that confused and frustrated Sandy quite so much as the continued existence of fruitcake. Oh, it had once been a treat, back when fruit was hard to come by in the dead of winter and the rich, dense sweetmeat was a luxury, but in these days of plenty it served no purpose save for nostalgia.

So it was with both surprise and confusion that he unwrapped the beautifully-wrapped present that Pitch had handed him without making eye contact, to find a solid brick of dark cake, dotted with brightly-coloured chunks of candied fruit. He gave Pitch a puzzled look, which brought a dusky, purplish blush to the dark spirit’s cheeks.

"I didn’t know what to get you!" Pitch half-snarled, in answer to the unspoken question. "It’s hardly as though I’ve been buying Christmas gifts for _anyone_ for the past several millenia, let alone an enemy turned lover, and all anyone seemed to be able to agree on was that you liked sweets…”

Sandy signed a tumbling hourglass whizzing past a running Pitch figure, propelled by little wings. _You’re a little behind the times_.

"I _knew_ I shouldn’t have listened to that glorified mall Santa,” Pitch grumbled, and Sandy, carefully setting aside the fruitcake, pressed a kiss to his cheek.

_Don’t worry. You’re more than sweet enough for me._

 

_..._

 

**Day 5: A Goblet Full of Eggnog  
**

 

"Wow, Sandy, you can really put that stuff away," Jack remarked, as Sandy set down his - sixth? Seventh? - goblet of eggnog, now empty, and let out a huge, though silent, burp. 

”Yeah, mate, ya might want to take it easy,” Bunny said, a hint of worry tinting his words. “That’s, uh, pretty strong stuff.” He looked down into his own goblet with an expression close to disbelief, quickly disturbed by a hearty slap on the back from North that spilled eggnog all over his ruff.

"Strong, hah! That is very good joke, Bunny."

"I’m serious, mate, this stuff tastes like it’s, what, a thousand proof? And _how_ am I supposed to clean this out of my fur?”

"I dunno, Bunny, I mean it’s _haaaaardly_ affecting  _meee_ ,” Tooth slurred, punctuating her sentence with a girlish giggle. She was bobbing in midair like a small ship on a stormy sea, and Jack darted forwards to catch her as she fell bodily out of the air. She leaned heavily against him, raising her head just enough to whisper something into his ear that made him blush so pink that he almost looked like a living boy again.

"Eggnog will come out of fur, no trouble!"

"Says _you_ , who’s never had fur a day in your life!”

"O _kay_ , I think you’ve had enough,” Jack concluded. “Guys, would one of you help me get Tooth to a couch? Or -” he blushed brighter, and long curls of frost spiralled out from under his feet and over Tooth’s feathers, causing her to squeak indignantly - “a bed?”

"But I’m not sleepy," Tooth argued, blinking sleepily. "Unless -" an idea seemed to dawn on her, and she gave Jack what she probably thought was a sultry smile - " _you’re_ coming with me?”

“ _What_?!”

"As long as there has been Santa Claus, he has worn fur coats."

“ _Not_ the same thing, North! I can’t just take off _my_ coat and hang it to dry, now can I?”

"Guys, a little help?" Jack called, as Tooth tried, unsuccessfully, to pry his lips apart for "just a _leeetle_ peek, Jackie, they’re so _lovely_ ”.

Sandy used the ensuing argument and confusion to down another two goblets of strongly-fortified eggnog, and then to slip away while everyone’s attention was focused elsewhere. Hopefully, his absence wouldn’t be immediately noticed, and by the time it was, he’d have accomplished his mission.

He’d have to hurry, though. He could already feel his liquid courage starting to dissolve.

…

Pitch Black had gotten into the habit of spending his Christmases alone underground, or keeping a low profile as he roamed the streets. It was just too risky to interfere in the Cossack’s special night, a lesson which had been painfully pounded into him over many long centuries. It didn’t do to cause too much trouble for the whole stretch between December 23rd and January 1st, until the belief and joy and  _wonder_ died down somewhat. So it was that the night after Christmas found the Boogeyman alone in the depths of his lair, curled up with a good red wine and watching _How The Grinch Stole Christmas_ , which Pitch loved, up until the unhappy ending.

The sudden sound of crashing and… _jingling_? from one of the many entrances interrupted the Grinch’s complaining of the noise, noise, noise, _noise_! Pitch sighed, and paused the film, pushing himself reluctantly to his feet. It wasn’t exactly a secret that the Guardian of Wonder liked to throw a party after Christmas, and that he was rather heavy-handed with the alcohol. If any of those do-gooders had gotten it into their inebriated heads to come and bother Pitch, they’d be waking up with more than just a hangover in the morning.

And, unsurprisingly, when Pitch found which entrance the clatter was coming from, it was one of the Guardians. Unfortunately, it was also the only Guardian whom Pitch had never really been able to defeat. The Sandman was weaving rather drunkenly, and yes, he was on Pitch’s ground now, but Pitch didn’t take that as any sign that he couldn’t kick Pitch’s ass if he wanted to.

"Sandy?" Pitch asked, emerging from the shadows cautiously, trying not to scare the little golden man _too_ badly. “Are you lost?”

Sandy looked around blithely for a long moment, before fixing his eyes on Pitch. A luminous smile burst across his face, and Pitch just had time to begin to grow worried before Sandy darted forward and, entirely unexpectedly, pressed a kiss to Pitch’s cheek.

Whatever Pitch had been expecting, it wasn’t _that_.

"…Sandy?" he asked, at length, when the Sandman had pulled back, and was staring at Pitch, his initial delighted smile fading as a seed of worry grew into a full-blown fear. "What - what was that?"

Sandy licked his lips, and shrugged nervously.

"You’re drunk," Pitch concluded, at length. His lair was never more than a dull cold at the best of times, but something in Sandy’s stare was making him feel uncomfortably warm. "You’re _very_ drunk,” he amended his previous statement, remembering what had transpired between the two of them the last time they’d seen each other. 

Sandy shrugged, again, and turned, his little shoulders slumping. For some reason, seeing him leave in defeat was even more heart-wrenching than seeing the Grinch join hands with those _wretched_ Whos around the tree, and Pitch couldn’t bring himself to let the Sandman leave like that. “Sandy! Wait!”

Sandy half-turned, the beginnings of a hopeful smile starting to curve his lips. All of a sudden, Pitch had no idea what he wanted to say.

"Maybe you’d like to come back when you’re more sober?" he asked, at last. "And we could - talk."

It was worth it to see the way that Sandy’s face lit up. And when Sandy wrapped small, warm arms around Pitch’s neck, Pitch didn’t push him away.

(Anyone claiming that Pitch had returned the hug, however, would shortly be corrected on that matter. Painfully.)

 

...

 

**Day 6: Singing Carols**

( _T_ _his assumes the Guardians hold a Christmas party at the Pole._ )

 

“ _O Christmas -_ tree? Star? Small, delightfully plump,  _delectably_ wicked -  _ow_!”

A loud, deliberate _thump_.

“ _O Christmas Sandy, O Christmas Sandy, how ugly is your sweaaaaaaaaaterrrrrrrrrrrrr -_ _hey_ , ‘m jus’ getting to th’ good part!”

The answering silence somehow managed to sound impatient.

“ _You’re not so greeeeeeen as you appear, you like to taaaaaaake it in the rear -“_

“ _O_ kay I have heard enough for several dozen lifetimes,” Jack muttered, and Tooth, who had finally started to doze off, gently smacked him on the leg.

"Go to sleep, you won’t have to hear them."

The next line, delivered at operatic volume (with, unfortunately, less than operatic skill), quickly proved her wrong.

“ _O Christmas Sandy, O Chriiiiiiiiiiiiiiistmas Sandeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, I’m gonna mmmmgfffghghf -“_

Jack let out a sigh, and curled up in the sudden and blissful silence.

It lasted for a whole minute before the muffled thumping started.

 

...

 

**Day 7: An Elf and a Krampus** **/Other Santa's Helpers  
**

 

Sandy swung the sign hanging in the doorway to ‘Closed’, before crossing the empty storefront to the counter where the other volunteers were already starting to sort through the day’s donations. The drive-through event had been a success, she was sure; the turnout had been the best so far this year. Santa’s Helpers would be making a lot of children happy this Christmas.

"How’re we doing?" she asked, and Oskar, the coordinator, looked up from the box he was sealing up with tape and smiled at her.

"We’ve just got to sort and pack these and then we can head home. Thank you again, Sandy, everyone, for all your hard work. None of this could happen without you."

Sandy ducked her head, embarrassed, and grabbed the nearest box. “Okay. How’re we sorting this stuff?”

…

It took a full hour and a half to get everything sorted and packed away, ready for wrapping and distribution. Sandy was one of the last left in the back room, struggling with a box that was only _slightly_ too heavy.

"Hey, Sandy," Raven said over her shoulder, standing in the doorway with the door propped open on one bony hip. "Come out so I can lock up, okay?"

"Okay," Sandy agreed, hurrying to catch up with the taller girl. Raven had a reputation for being short-tempered and prickly, and although Sandy had never seen it, she didn’t really want to give Raven a reason to show that side of her personality.

"Would you -" Raven started, as they walked away from the storefront, then bit her lower lip, with a quick glance at Sandy that she didn’t notice. "Would you like to grab a drink or something? With me?"

"…I don’t think so," Sandy answered, distantly, still thinking about presents. "We’ve got to be up early tomorrow to wrap these."

The only response she got from Raven was a sigh.

…

About a block from Sandy’s apartment building, it started to snow, thick white flakes that filled the air with tiny dancing ghosts. Sandy offered to call Raven a cab, an offer which Raven gladly accepted. They both climbed the two flights of stairs, Raven’s long legs making the climb far more easily than Sandy’s shorter ones. The little apartment was cold and very still, and even with two people filling the admittedly small space, it didn’t warm up quickly.

"Make yourself comfortable, it’ll take a while for them to get here," Sandy said, hanging up the phone. "Can I get you anything? A hot drink, maybe?"

"Yes, please," Raven answered, perching on the edge of the couch rather like her namesake. Sandy sighed, rolling her eyes when she ducked behind the counter.

"Hot chocolate, tea, coffee, warm milk…?"

"Tea would be fine, thanks."

Sandy put the kettle on and walked around the small partition, plopping herself down on the couch next to Raven and nearly knocking her off of it. “You can’t _possibly_ be comfortable sitting like that,” Sandy pointed out, and Raven drew herself up like a queen, the tips of her ears burning red. “And it’s freezing in here. Here.”

The folded blanket that Sandy threw nearly hit Raven in the face. The taller girl only barely managed to catch it, only for it to unfold itself in her hands, leaving Raven in a tangle of blankets. Sandy tried not to laugh, but as Raven grew angrier and angrier and more and more entangled, it became completely impossible. Her giggles earned her a glare that could have melted ice, and a throw pillow to the face.

Sandy sat perfectly still for a moment, unable to believe what had just happened. Had _Raven_ actually just hit her in the face with a pillow?

Yes. Yes she had. And that, Sandy decided, called for retaliation.

"All right, that was childi-" Raven started, but was cut off abruptly by a pillow to the face. She gave Sandy a disbelieving stare, for just long enough for Sandy’s stomach to drop and for an apology to line up on her tongue, before Raven’s eyes narrowed and a knifeblade smile appeared on her face. "Oh, it’s _on._ ”

…

It took the kettle whistling to interrupt their pillow fight, which quickly turned into a different kind of fight altogether when Raven discovered that Sandy was ticklish.

…

Raven’s cab came and went without Raven in it.

 

...

 

**Day 8: In the Middle of a Silent Night**

 

 _This is a pleasant change_ , Sandy’s voice remarked, in the spot in Pitch’s mind where dream and memory intersect. _You being the silent one for once_.

Normally, Pitch would have made a snarky comment in return, and indeed, one was already lining up on his tongue. He was powerless to vocalize it, though, with the cool metal of the muzzle lovingly holding his jaw shut. Even if he could have spoken, he wasn’t sure he could have managed a coherent sentence under Sandy’s ministrations.

One small, soft hand gently stroked down the column of Pitch’s throat, as the other fisted in his hair and pulled his head back, surprisingly rough and possessive for one so small and sweet. The hand at Pitch’s throat moved down, tracing the line of his collarbone and counting off the bones in his shoulder, while soft butterfly kisses measured the curve of his exposed throat. When Sandy reached the place where Pitch’s shoulder and neck intersect, the kiss was replaced by a bite, a sudden nip that sent an electric jolt through Pitch. His groan was only somewhat muffled by the muzzle.

Sandy drew back, the absence of his warm, soft body pressed against Pitch’s leaving Pitch shivering both from cold and desperate, helpless want. There was a soft shifting sound of sand, and a single silky tendril of dreamsand traced the strip of shadow-made-solid that covered Pitch’s eyes, the solid, heavy clasp of the muzzle, and finally down over his arms and the lacework of golden ropes binding them to each other behind his back. _You’re being quiet, remember?_

Pitch nodded, aware that the motion was quickly beginning to border on frantic. Small, warm hands cupped his jaw, and he all but melted into their touch, letting out a slow, silent sigh at the feeling of warm breath on his face and the sweet scent of honey and cinnamon.

Sandy pressed a soft kiss to Pitch’s nose, and then to each eyelid. _Very good._ Small fingers trailed down Pitch’s chest, brushing carelessly over his nipples, tracing each line of boning in the corset that cinched his waist. Pitch’s breath caught when Sandy’s fingers dug into his hips, and he fought not to make any sound. He couldn’t see it, but he was certain that Sandy was grinning wickedly, and a wet, lascivious sound might have been Sandy licking his lips.

When Sandy finally,  _finally_ , took him in hand, it took everything Pitch had to swallow down his moans.

 

...

 

**Day 9: A Christmas Carol**

 

In his dream, gold spills across the void like a handful of flung jewellery, the light of civilization spreading across the stars. There is light, and warmth, golden brilliance beating back the darkness; there is joy and merriment that drives away the grimmest of moods and lightens the heaviest of burdens; there is love, like atmosphere, like aether, the sea that he swims in, the air that he breathes, the fire that warms him and the food that sustains him. In his dream, the past comes alive under his fingertips, flows through him like water.

In his dream, there are children, snug and safe and filled with joy and love and light, and though their world is smaller, it is no less golden. Their thoughts are alight with that same wonder, that same curiosity, that same _imagination_ that had once driven them across galaxies. There is laughter on their lips as they face without fear a world that is huge and bursting with possibilities both awesome and terrible. And they are protected, by a love greater and deeper than they will ever know, from things that they may never even know exist.

In his dream, things _twist_.

In his dream, fear conquers all. The love and the light are stripped away, the anguish and despair still flow through him like water. And then it all slips through his fingers.

In his dream, he is screaming from a hole in the ground, unwanted, forgotten, pleading to an impassive figure above.

In the sky above, an impassive figure looks down, looks to the lines of golden dreamsand snaking down through bare earth, does not look up to the disapproving moon. Marley could intercede on behalf of Scrooge. On this night, he, who knows where all stories spring from, has the right. Let the moon glare.

Under the bed, under the earth, Pitch Black thrashes and cries out in his sleep. Whether it is a lament or a call to action is beyond earthly powers to know.

_"I am not the man I was - !"_

 

 

...

 

**Day 10: Epiphany**

 

 

Whatever Pitch had been expecting when he’d crossed the Wall, it hadn’t been this.

"A fallen star," he grumbled to himself, picking his way over the molten and twisted landscape carefully, avoiding those rocks and hunks of metal that were still glowing and steaming slightly in the predawn dew, "ought to be a great glowing… _thing_ , or perhaps a burning rock from space, as the scientists say. It has - _no_ \- right to be -” He stopped, gesturing helplessly towards the small golden figure lying in the very centre of the massive crater that had taken out a huge chunk of the forest.

Said figure, Pitch observed, as he made his way closer, was decidedly not ethereal either, which felt bizarrely like a personal insult. He hadn’t come all this way to bring his beloved back a - a - a small, round, golden man, with the most fantastically unruly hair that Pitch had ever seen. If he hadn’t glowed with some kind of indescribable inner radiance, Pitch wouldn’t have known that he was a star at all.

And yet, Pitch concluded, crossing the last few feet of impact crater to look down on the little being lying in the middle of utter devastation as though having the most restful sleep of his life, there was no doubt at all that he was a star. There was nothing else he _could_ be. And there was something strangely magnetic about that serene smile, those wild locks, those delicate hands -

Pitch realised he was staring in the same instant that the little star’s eyes snapped open.

 

...

 

**Day 11: Fresh Cookies and Warm Milk**

 

Sandy opened the door to a stench of burning sugar, smoke so thick in the air that he couldn’t so much as take a breath without coughing up a lung. He left the door hanging open and dashed into the kitchen, intending to call the fire department, but that plan was abandoned when he found the kitchen full of thick, dark gray smoke emanating from the open oven, and Pitch coughing into a dishtowel as he waved another towel erratically and angrily at the maw of the oven.

Between hacking coughs, Sandy managed to ask, “What on Earth -“

Pitch turned, giving him a look of profound dismay for just an instant before a tight little smile took its place. “Oh, _damn_ , you weren’t supposed to be home until I’d sorted this - Surprise! I tried to be domestic for you, and look where it got us.”

"Thank…you?" Sandy said, carefully. Pitch’s grin had grown slightly manic. "What happened?"

"I put the cookies in the oven, discovered we didn’t have any milk in the house, and ran out to grab some." Pitch gave a little sardonic laugh, which quickly turned to coughing. "It was _going_ to be _perfect_. You, me, fresh-baked cookies and milk, a little Christmas music, snow falling outside…” He sighed, which lead to another bout of coughing and flailing feebly at the smoke still pouring forth from the oven with the dishtowel. “I should have remembered that I’m not cut out for playing happy families.” He thrust the hand holding the dishtowel into the oven, pulled out a pan covered in what looked like lumps of charcoal, and unceremoniously dumped the whole thing into the sink.

Sandy dared to venture over, wishing not for the first time that he was taller as he wrapped both arms around his boyfriend’s ribs and pressed his face into the soft fabric of Pitch’s t-shirt. This had the twofold benefit of forcing Pitch to relax, and of filtering the oppressive smoke through the faint scent of clean sweat, vanilla, and lingering lavender laundry soap. “Thank you,” he murmured.

The moment was ruined when Pitch coughed, again. He pulled away, and Sandy let him, but made a point of taking his hand as soon as possible.

"The cafe on the corner says they have fresh-baked gingerbread cookies," Sandy offered, and Pitch smiled faintly. "We could go have a drink and let the house air out a bit."

"We might as well try. Their cookies can’t be any worse than these."

 

...

 

**Day 12: Christmas Morning**

 

Sandy woke late, too late. There was no clock in the guest room at North’s, but he didn’t need one - the room was already flooded with cheery buttercup light, and the other side of the bed was empty.

Disappointment flooded through him like the sunlight. He’d thought - But it didn’t matter what he’d thought. Pitch had taken advantage of the still-young Yuletide truce to take advantage of Sandy, and then, having taken what he wanted, Pitch had taken off before Sandy could wake up. It was as clear as the rumpled pile of sheets.

Sandy wondered, for a moment, why he’d expected anything different from someone who had betrayed him so many times in the past. Pitch had sided against him when the Guardians had been chosen, had rejected the offer to join them, had used what Sandy had taught him about dreams to turn them into nightmares. No, Sandy realised, as he bumbled gently out of bed, he wasn’t surprised at all. Pitch had both figuratively and literally stabbed him in the back many times before. What was one more?

Sandy gathered his robes around himself as he started down the hall to the staircase leading down to the globe room and the massive tree that North had set up. The tree had to be at least ten feet tall, and Sandy was almost afraid of what might lurk under the elaborate wrapping of some of the drifts of presents that had accumulated beneath it.

The gifts would all be unwrapped by now, Sandy knew. The Guardians were not a patient lot at best, and on Christmas Day, with North (who wouldn’t have slept after his long flight the night before) egging them on, there was no way that they’d have waited for a small, silent, sleeping dreamweaver. Sandy didn’t mind - well, didn’t mind  _much_ \- but after the empty bed that morning, the prospect of having been overlooked in the excitement made his heart drop into his stomach and sit there like a lump of coal. 

But when he descended the stairs, the first thing he saw was his friends, each surrounded by a small pile of wrapped gifts, each of whom broke into relieved smiles at the sight of Sandy’s face. “At last, you are being awake!” North thundered, practically bounding to his feet and ushering Sandy to a seat, around which his own little pile of beautifully-wrapped gifts awaited him. Sandy let a question mark form over his head, and North let out a huge laugh. “What is so confusing, Sandman? Is Christmas morning, and look! We waited for you to begin.”

Sandy didn’t dissolve the question mark, and the other Guardians looked around guiltily.

"It was Jack’s idea," Tooth finally said, and the newest addition to their group sputtered.

"I just asked why you guys were starting without Sandy! It was Pitch who said we _had_ to wait.”

Sandy’s heart, no longer leaden, leapt into his throat and lodged there. He conjured a silhouette of the Boogeyman over his head, and then a series of question marks, each flashier than the last. Pitch was - was _still here_?

Jack shrugged. “Last time I saw him he was heading for the kitchen. Said something about breakfast and ‘if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself’.”

"Which you do, especially around here with all of these…pointy, jangling creatures underfoot," Pitch’s velvet voice said just behind Sandy, which _absolutely did not_ make Sandy jump almost a foot in surprise. He whirled around in his seat, to see the Boogeyman emerging from a patch of shadow balancing a tray laden with sticky buns on one arm and trying to pry an elf from his robes with the other. “North, your minions don’t seem to have heard about the Yuletide truce.”

"They are…not so bright, da? Will take many years to get through their skulls," North agreed cheerfully, making no move to help Pitch lever off the elf that, Sandy saw, was gnawing at his leg. Pitch only sniffed in response, giving up on the little creature in favour of turning an uncharacteristically shy smile on Sandy.

"Merry Christmas," Pitch said, and if the faintest waver of uncertainty worked its way into his voice, he showed no sign of it. "It’s not very elaborate, but…" He swung the tray of sticky buns down into Sandy’s lap, close enough that Sandy could feel the heat wafting off of them. They must have been freshly baked, Sandy thought, and the mental image of Pitch in an apron caused him to giggle and nearly spill the tray.

Too late, Sandy realised he hadn’t gotten Pitch anything in return, and said as much. Pitch turned away, clearly uncomfortable. “I hardly even got you a present,” he snarled, half-heartedly, when Sandy tugged at his sleeve.

Sandy shook his head. Of course Pitch had gotten him a present. The best present he could have hoped for, in fact. One he’d mostly given up hoping for long, long ago.

He didn’t say anything about it, though, aware that the others were watching carefully. Instead, he formed a couple of figures out of sand, one tall and lean and one small and round, and let their motions become more and more explicit until the other Guardians, embarrassed, looked away.

When they looked back, Pitch was wearing a large gold collar around his neck, one that only two of them remembered. He would say nothing about it, though, and when Sandy was pressed to explain his odd gift, he only passed around the tray of sticky buns.

They proved to be delicious.


	25. Chapter 25

The present itself was not unexpected, after North’s insistence that they should all take part in a Secret Santa gift exchange. (Bunny had, jokingly, accused him of trying to get out of having to choose gifts for all of the Guardians himself, to which North had only tapped the side of his nose and winked knowingly.) But what the gift actually turned out to _be_ was a surprise.

Sandy turned the length of delicate chain over and over in his hands, only growing more confused with every turn. It _could_ , he supposed, be a gift from one of his fellow Guardians, but he couldn’t quite seem to think of which of them would be most likely to give jewellery as a gift. He knew that North sometimes liked to work in very fine carvings, and that Bunny had more of an artistic bent than the boomerangs and bracers would suggest, and of course that Tooth had a finely-honed appreciation of all things gilded and glittery, but he couldn’t imagine any of them giving a gift with such intimate symbolic meaning to someone whose entire language was symbolic. He didn’t know Jack quite as well - their acquaintance had only been a passing one, with Jack tending to stick to the daylight hours when children were allowed out to play in his snow - but he felt confident that Jack wasn’t the sort to give jewellery as a gift anyway, even if their friendship had been close enough to warrant such a thing.

But f the gift hadn’t been from any of the Guardians, and Sandy felt quite sure that it hadn’t, then that only left -

Sandy felt a slow smile spread across his face. If Pitch really wanted to be part of the Secret Santa exchange, then Sandy certainly wasn’t going to be the one to shut him out.

Although, now, that begged the question of what to give Pitch in return. Something equally intimate in symbolic meaning, Sandy thought, even as a blush threatened to spill over his cheeks at the idea. After all, he didn’t want to _discourage_ any further gifts.

It would be interesting to see just how far they could escalate.


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a prompt: "pitch is giving an evil monologue, sandy is distracted think about how nice would be kissing him right now and there!" It was a cute prompt, I made it sad.

Things were different now, and Sandy had thought he understood that. But it wasn’t until the little group of spirits that the Man in the Moon had chosen as his ‘Guardians’ went toe-to-toe with Pitch Black for the first time that he realised just how different things were.

The look of betrayal that flashed across Pitch’s face, seeing Sandy among the Guardians, vanished almost as soon as it appeared under a mocking sneer. “Well, look what we have here,” he drawled, pointedly turning away from Sandy to assess the rest of the small force that had been assembled against him. “An old man, a pretty bird, and a fluffy bunny rabbit. _These_ are the fearsome warriors that the Man in the Moon has arrayed against me? Dear me, old Manny’s standards must really be slipping. Either that, or his eyesight is going.” He kept talking, probably spilling more insults, but Sandy tuned him out, choosing instead to focus on the movement of Pitch’s slim lips, the occasional flash of jagged, ragged teeth or flicker of a dark tongue.

His opposite number, Sandy decided, had a very pleasant mouth, when it was being put to purposes other than - oh. Now Pitch had stopped making jabs at the Guardians and moved on to expounding on his own strength and power, how could they _ever_ hope to so much as challenge him, fear was a greater force than they could possibly imagine, blah blah blah, darkness, he’d show them all. Pitch had ventured on this kind of tangent before, more and more as the humans delved farther and farther into their Industrial Revolution, as they relied less and less on old superstition and put less credence in old limitations, but Sandy hadn’t thought he’d actually _believed_ it. He’d thought - _hoped_ , was probably more accurate - that Pitch had only been trying to bolster his own failing spirits, that he wasn’t mad enough yet with loss of power that he would actually try any of the desperate schemes he’d invented to cling to the belief he craved.

Clearly, Sandy thought, he had been wrong.

And this monologue was _boring_. Sandy mused a moment longer on the way the tendons stood out from Pitch’s neck, the way his lip curled in derision, and reflected that, in times gone by, he would now stop Pitch’s babble with a kiss. Perhaps to those slim lips, perhaps somewhere else, somewhere that would stop Pitch’s words by momentarily stopping his breath, distract them both into happier thoughts.

Sandy shook his head. There would be none of that now. Pitch had set himself as the enemy of the Guardians, and therefore as Sandy’s enemy. There would be no more kisses, not so long as this state continued.

So there was only one way to make Pitch stop talking.

Sandy thought a silent apology, before forming his dreamsand into a pair of formidable whips.


	27. Chapter 27

It was the third day of the treaty negotiations, and for the first time, Kozmotis felt, they had actually made some progress.

He looked over the complicated golden swirls hovering above the parchment before him one more time, and felt his head spin as he tried to decipher them. Whatever language the inhabitants of this strange little star spoke, it wasn’t anything like any he’d encountered before. Even their script was constantly changing, refusing to be fixed into one form or position, which made it lovely to look at but totally impossible to read.

He sighed, and made a quick scan of the transcription in Constellar Standard underneath the beautiful but difficult glittering scrawl. At least the star-people’s demands weren’t excessive. All they wanted was fair recompense in any trade for the dreams and wishes that were their sole export, representation in any trade or territory dispute, and - Kozmotis blinked at the last clause. _The Ambassador_.

It took him a moment to turn the words around in his head until they made sense. Of course, an ambassador would be a perfectly normal request. He couldn’t believe he’d misinterpreted it. All this poring over documents and haggling over political nonsense really wasn’t his forte. Besides which, he really needed to sleep.

After a cursory glance at the terms that he’d helped draw up on behalf of the Constellar Alliance, Kozmotis hastily scrawled his name under the last word on the scroll, watching as a single tendril of gold wound down from the star-people’s terms to wind itself through the loops of his signature. The movement was unexpected, but not surprising; with all the changing and swirling that the golden writing had been doing, it only made sense that it would adapt to the final signature making the treaty official.

Still, for some reason it weighed heavily on his mind, and he lay awake for a long time before finally drifting off.

…

He was awakened the next morning by one of his men, wearing nothing but a nightshirt and a distressed expression. “Um, General Pitchiner, sir, there’s someone here to see you…”

The man retreated before he could be reprimanded for inappropriate conduct and attire in front of a senior officer, which was just as well, since Kozmotis didn’t feel equal to giving him the expected reprimand either. He was lightyears from home, out of his depth with all this diplomatic business, and he didn’t really feel like being on poor terms with the only familiar faces around.

If his visitor was important enough to warrant risking a reprimand for barging in on the General half-dressed, though, it would probably be best not to keep them waiting. Kozmotis stifled a sigh as he pulled on his dress uniform, wishing that he was actually on campaign instead of playing diplomat. At least he didn’t have to try to _impress_ the damn fearling armies.

The visitors turned out to be a small group of star-people, some of whom he recognized from the talks as dignitaries, a few of whom were strangers entirely. One of them, who was flanked by two grave-looking figures with elaborate and impractical-looking weapons, was almost entirely shrouded in a heavy veil that fell from the crown of their head to the tips of their toes. One of the dignitaries from the day before noticed where Kozmotis was looking, and gave him a huge, bright smile, before a golden swirl not unlike their writing uncoiled from above their head. Their voice, like all of the star-people’s voices, appeared in his head sounding like something from a dream.

_We are most grateful that you have agreed to our terms. We have selected a bonding-partner for you and can perform the ceremony whenever is convenient._

Kozmotis wasn’t certain that he’d heard correctly; every word had made sense, but the two ideas seemed so disconnected from one another that he couldn’t seem to reconcile them. “I beg your pardon?”

 _You agreed_. The figure under the veil shifted slightly, uncomfortably, and the dignitary’s smile dimmed slightly. _In our terms. The Ambassador for the partnership. We have your name in agreement._

Kozmotis’ polite smile froze in place, and he was dimly aware that everyone was staring at him. “What?” he finally managed, the memory of spiraling golden writing taunting him with its impenetrability. Stars and comets, he could have agreed to _anything_ -

_You wish to break off our agreement?_

"Wh- No! No, that is the last thing that I want to do." _The Ambassador_. They couldn’t have just meant they wanted someone to represent them in the central galaxies, _could_ they. “You mean I - I’ve signed on for a political marriage?”

The little dignitary’s next words were coloured with a layer of disdain. _You don’t seal major agreements with a bond of good faith? How…_ Kozmotis was somehow certain that they barely skirted the word ‘barbaric’. _Unusual._

He bit back a groan, already hearing what Artemis Lunanoff would have to say on his return. _"So you had a peaceful trade agreement with these people worked out and signed, and you insulted them, broke off the agreement, and came limping back here with your tail between your legs because you couldn’t be bothered to read their terms properly before you signed?"_

"It’s not one of our traditions, no," Kozmotis said, trying very hard to keep his voice level, not to show any of the distress he was feeling. "If those are your terms, however, we will be glad to - to do as you wish to assure cooperation and good faith between our people." _Married_. To someone he’d never seen before, someone who wasn’t even his _species_ -

At least a political marriage wouldn’t be expected to be particularly loving, he thought, and managed with great force of will not to sigh.

The dignitary beamed - literally beamed, glowing with the soft light of a distant star - and nodded. _We can begin now, if you are amenable?_

"Certainly," Kozmotis answered, trying to pretend he couldn’t see the looks his men were giving him. What good would it do to try to put it off? Might as well get it over and done with at once.

The little dignitary nodded, and stepped aside, letting the veiled figure step forward. They drew their veil aside slowly, almost reluctantly, just enough for a small golden hand to emerge, and for a moment Kozmotis wondered if they had had any more choice in the matter than he’d had.

_Your hand, Ambassador Pitchiner._

Hearing ‘Ambassador’ before his own name rather than the usual appellation of ‘General’ was strange and slightly disorienting, and it took Kozmotis longer than usual to respond. He moved a little too quickly in an attempt to compensate, reaching out and taking hold of the veiled figure’s hand more roughly than he would have liked. They flinched backwards slightly, and Kozmotis, silently cursing every star that had aligned to put him here, loosed his grip enough that the star-person could pull away if they wanted to.

If they had wanted to, they didn’t get the chance. The dignitary said a single word, unfamiliar and sinuous, and strands of gold burst out of thin air, wrapping around their clasped hands with a warmth that was surprising, though not unpleasant. They twined into a complicated knot, glowing brighter and brighter until Kozmotis had to look away.

With one final flash, the knot burst, filling the air with a fine fog of golden glitter.

Kozmotis waved away a few grains that hovered precariously close to his face, making his head feel heavy and dozy. He stopped mid-wave, though, when the small figure whose hand he was still holding pushed their veil completely aside.

His new…wife? Husband? _Partner_ looked up at him with an apprehensive expression, before suddenly bursting into a huge, only slightly relieved grin. Kozmotis gladly returned it, his mouth suddenly dry, taking in soft golden curves and wild hair, bright but sleepy eyes that were giving him an equally assessing look. A slight quirk of that gorgeous smile told him that his partner was the opposite of disappointed with his new husband.

Maybe this marriage wouldn’t be as bad as he’d feared.


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another one for the Blood Red Blacksand AU.

_Click_.

The single bulb in the overhead lamp glowed a soft, ambery red as it cooled, a single burning eye in the sudden dark.

_Tell me more._

He hadn’t, of course. Hadn’t let himself. Couldn’t trust those silken honey words, couldn’t trust that kind of calm, understanding smile. He’d made that mistake once. Never again.

Those eyes, though. Burning, from the inside, like two little embers in that deceptively soft face. Searing right through him, seeing through the flesh and sinew right through to what was splashed in brilliant crimson across the back of his skull.

 _Tell me more_.

Those eyes, he thought, perhaps he could trust.

Those eyes, perhaps, could see the same things he saw. The way the dark would fill with bloodied lips and teeth, the wolf of a thousand childhood stories come to devour him, swallow him whole; cutting his way out from its belly. Putting on Grandmother’s clothes, Grandmother’s skin, already tasting the rich blood and fat and flesh of a sweet plump innocent child.

Pitch shifted, stretched out on the narrow bed, suddenly too warm for the thin blanket. He reached downwards with one hand, curling long fingers around his already-interested cock and beginning to stroke, slowly, almost teasingly, as he thought Sanderson might. He kept his eyes fixed on the ceiling, half-dreaming and half-believing he could see Sanderson’s eyes burning there.

_Tell me more._

_You want to hear more, do you? More about human sacrifices? You look like the kind of god who would thirst for them._ _Steaming flesh laid open in the first pale rays of dawn, red as fire, red as a valentine, heart thumping out its last on my outstretched hand. I’d make offerings to you, Sandy, I’d bathe you in an ocean of blood to keep you whole and fresh and ever this beautiful, and you’d baptize me with blood on your lips -_

Pitch came so hard that, for a moment, all he could see was light.


	29. Chapter 29

"That _can’t_ be a Baby original. _You_ , dear, are wearing a _replica_.”

Sandy froze in place, turning slowly on one thick heel, her pretty yellow skirt flaring out around her. “I beg your pardon?” she asked the tall, gaunt spectre decked out in head-to-toe Moitie.

Said spectre looked pointedly at Sandy’s skirt. “There is no way that a Baby dress would fit someone of your… _girth_.”

"It’s not an OP," Sandy snapped back, stung. "It’s a _skirt_ , and if you had ever had to shop for brand while _not_ being approximately ten inches around, you’d know about the magic of shirring.”

The look she got in return was positively poisonous. Sandy took a perverse delight in pointing out, “And besides, your knees are showing.”

"It doesn’t _matter_. Mana’s knees show half the time and he’s still an icon,” the spectre hissed, but Sandy merely smiled.

"Whatever you say, _dear_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Explaining the terminology in this one might take longer than the fic itself! I'm going to quote what I wrote in explanation when someone asked, just in case anyone is confused:
> 
> "Baby and Moitie are Baby the Stars Shine Bright and Moi-Meme Moitie, respectively, and they are respectively a (possibly the) founding lolita brand and one of the most famous gothic lolita and elegant gothic aristocrat brand. A replica is exactly what it sounds like, a reproduction of a piece from one of the big lolita brands, but made by a different company. Replicas are usually cheaper than or come in a wider range of sizes than the original design. Shirring is basically gathering fabric and stitching it to elastic so that it has more give in it. An OP is a ‘one-piece’, or a dress (with sleeves, I think), and you’re not supposed to show your knees in a coord or outfit unless you’re going for ero-lolita, which is a style subset which is apparently very tricky to do well.
> 
> "There is a whole huge debate over whether replicas are theft or simply a reasonable alternative to expensive and exclusively-sized brand designs while still having brand style, since ‘brand’ (meaning the big founding brands from Japan, like Baby and Angelic Pretty) is something of a status symbol in lolita circles.
> 
> "And Mana is…well, Mana is the Bowie of Japan. (That is an overly-simplified comparison that probably is wildly inaccurate, but it’ll do for now.)"


	30. Chapter 30

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For [thismightyneed](thismightyneed.tumblr.com)'s eldritch curio shop AU!

The shop had been Sandy’s idea.

Pitch had protested at first, had resisted with everything he had in him. “It’s too risky,” he’d said. “You can’t just make shops appear out of nowhere where there’s never been a shop before,” he’d said. “Someone will notice that we’re not really human,” he’d said. “Why are you so set on operating a curio shop anyway?” he’d asked.

None of it had mattered, because in the end, as always, Pitch hadn’t been able to resist the little dreamweaver, no matter how much he might have wanted to. Which was why, instead of flitting through the lengthening shadows of trees to worry joggers in the park, he was leaning against the dark wood counter of a little hole-in-the-wall shop that Sandy had decided to open out of what had, moments before, been a solid brick wall, waiting for a couple of aging hippies to stop ogling the window display and come _in_ already.

This body didn’t fit quite right, either. It _itched_ , in ways that he couldn’t possibly scratch without scaring away the prospective customers and revealing his true self, which would be entertaining, but would also probably – no, _definitely_ – make Sandy mad at him. And that was something that Pitch didn’t really want to risk, not so soon after…well, after. So instead, he sighed, and fixed on a smile that he hoped looked just this side of predatory, and waited for the bell above the door to jingle.

 A sudden _smack_ to his backside made him whirl, to see Sandy smiling innocently. “Don’t give me that look,” Pitch snarled, which only made Sandy’s smile grow wider.

“Not now, dear, we’ve got customers.”

Pitch was fairly certain his jaw hit the floor. Sandy was _talking_? Sandy hadn’t voluntarily spoken since – since – he tried to remember the last time he’d heard Sandy’s voice, and came up blank. Was it because they were both playing human? Or was it just to torment him further?

He had a sneaking suspicion that the latter was the truth. Just one sentence in those lullaby-soft tones, and Pitch was already feeling uncomfortably weak at the knees.

He had just enough time to recover before the door swung open, setting the little silver bell hanging from the frame merrily chiming. There was something very familiar about the couple who stepped in, looking around in something akin to awe, but Pitch couldn’t quite put his finger on what. He gave them a few moments to browse, the smaller and rounder of the two gravitating to a display of gold chains, some thick as his wrist, others fine as spider’s silk, while the taller and darker of the pair came dangerously close to touching a ring of heavy keys that Pitch somehow felt certain were cursed.

“Can I help you?” he asked, smoothly, stepping out from behind the counter and smiling at the way both of the customers jumped.

“Oh! Uh, no thank you, we’re just looking,” the smaller, rounder one said, nudging his companion, who was frowning at Pitch as though Pitch were a particularly difficult equation he was trying to solve. Pitch raised an eyebrow, and the man’s frown turned thoughtful.

“Don’t I know you fr-”

“Are you scaring the customers again?” Sandy’s mellifluous tones broke into the conversation just as Sandy did, wrapping an arm around Pitch’s waist as casually as though he did it all the time. Pitch stared down at Sandy in surprise, and Sandy flashed him a grin that was just a hint too wide, before turning a more normal smile to the two strangers. “Are you two looking for anything in particular, or just browsing?”

Ten minutes later, the strangers had left with some sort of blown-glass contraption, the purpose of which Pitch couldn’t even begin to guess at. Sandy smiled as he clapped both hands together and the door of the shop slammed closed of its own accord, the bell frantically jangling as the shop dissolved around them into swirls of dreamsand, leaving both Pitch and Sandy standing on the street. It took everything Pitch had not to sigh too disappointedly when Sandy shook off his human disguise, grinning from ear to ear and babbling in symbols again. Instead, he let his own disguise slip, and concealed the sigh as one of relief when the insistent itch dissolved with it. “Well, I hope that was worth it to you.”

Sandy only nodded, bobbing up and down in a disgustingly adorable fashion.

“Who were they, anyway?” Pitch asked, his curiousity getting the better of him for a moment. Sandy’s smile turned mysterious, and he shrugged. “What? Oh, fine then, don’t tell me. Now that you’ve got that out of your system -”

He wasn’t sure how it was possible to interrupt someone with silent giggles, but Sandy managed it anyway. Pitch took a deep, steadying breath before asking, “You don’t really mean to go through this whole charade _again_ , do you?”

The hopeful look that Sandy gave him in answer should, Pitch decided, be classified as a highly dangerous weapon.

“ _Fine_ ,” he growled. “You know I’m not going to say no _now_.”

Sandy signed a smiling face, before dissolving it into a streamer of gold that wound its way delicately around the back of Pitch’s neck, coiling interestedly around his ear. _Cheer up_.

“I don’t see much point in that,” Pitch retorted, trying to keep his voice cold even as the tendril of dreamsand stroked the sensitive shell of his ear. Sandy rolled his eyes, before conjuring a tiny cloud of sand, just enough to float him up to whisper into the ear that his dreamsand wasn’t currently teasing.

_“If I’m playing human, you’ll get to hear my voice again.”_

Pitch licked his lips and swallowed hard, his mouth suddenly and inexplicably dry. “I suppose I could suffer through.”


	31. Chapter 31

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another one from the eldritch Pitch and Sandy AU. For a prompt: "Sandy and Pitch fighting over a dessert. :)" I interpreted 'dessert' somewhat liberally.

This mind isn’t dreaming, but what it i _s_ doing is almost better. Flickerflashing world-from-world, wakingdreaming a thousand thousand whatifmaybes. And it isn’t alone. Glittergold threads through every fancy, lapping up sweetgood thoughts, lazily batting at molecules of serotonin. Likes a passing daydream and snags it, sucking down the thread of story, liquorice-lace-long, sugarfluff-light.

A splash of bloodybright douses candyfloss thoughts, darksharp teeth taking bigbig bites of glittergold’s prize. The whatifmaybes crackle with thunderlight, epinephrine pulse drumbeating in nonexistent ears, bloody teeth and windowscraping claws tearing greedygreedy into sweetgood and leaving bitterrich in their wake.

Glittergold shivers - blast of sudden wind in rattling branches, starling chases crow from her nest, _mineminemine!_ Stickysweet pours over wakedreams, candystripe swirls dripping down synapses. Darksharp grins set them spinning, hypnosis spirals like pondripples, galaxies, shuddering everspreading circles. Honeysweet and terrordark curl close, twine like nerve clusters, lollipops, hanging trees. Bittersweet wakedreams feed giggling glittersharp and darkgold.

And if a daydreaming mind finds itself wandering to strange places, well, it’s only daydreaming, after all.


	32. Chapter 32

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a prompt: "Pitch and Sandy decided clothes for each other"

"This worked better in theory," Pitch muttered, hunching in on himself and awkwardly trying to cover all of his exposed skin with only his two hands.

 _Speak for yourself_ , Sandy thought, licking his lips. Perhaps it wasn’t quite fair, after Pitch had chosen such an exquisitely flattering and relatively modest costume for _him_ (and not all in black, either!), but, well, he simply couldn’t resist an opportunity like this. After all, for all that Pitch liked to prance around without a shirt, the darker spirit could be surprisingly prudish. And Sandy wasn’t going to pass up the chance to put as much of that lovely lean form on display as he possibly could.

"Oh, you think you’re _so_ clever, don’t you,” Pitch snarled, gesturing down at himself with a clatter of jewellery. “You could have at _least_ given me actual trousers, not this…this… _this_!” He tried to straighten up, but was pulled up short when one of the elaborately-worked gold bangles on his wrist snagged in the sheer fabric of the light, flowing pants that Sandy had graciously allowed him. He muttered a steady stream of curses under his breath as he tried to untangle the various chains and baubles that Sandy had draped him with and only managed to get himself more hopelessly entwined. “Perverse little creampuff, after I spent all that time on _your_ jacket and waistcoat…I’ve got half a mind to take them _back_.”

Sandy only realised that Pitch was deadly serious when a sudden breeze tickled his tummy where he _knew_ he’d been covered only moments before. He looked down, his mouth falling open in shock at the sight of what Pitch had traded his lovely antique-gold ensemble for. Under any other circumstances, he might have appreciated the delicate gold lace over the black satin of the panties Pitch had picked out for him, the bold black embroidery over the gold of his garter belt and the intricate damask patterning of the luxuriously silky stockings. But right now, it was nothing less than a declaration of war, and Sandy had just the counterattack up his (currently nonexistent) sleeve.

Pitch only got to wear his smug look of triumph for a handful of seconds before, with a _clank_ like an entire armoury toppling over at once, a heap of glittering golden jewellery dropped on top of him.


	33. Chapter 33

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a prompter who wanted Pitch and Sandy flirting with terrible puns.

"What? Oh, _no_ , darling, every second I get to spend with you is a _dream_.”

Sandy frowned, prodding Pitch in the ribs gently with one finger. Spirals of golden sand whirled aimlessly around his head, before suddenly coiling into a lightbulb. It dissolved almost instantly, and Sandy’s sand twisted into the shape of an armoured human figure, its bottom half equine. Pitch squinted at it, confused, even as Sandy pointed enthusiastically at it.

"No, I don’t - _oh!_ Oh, Sandman, that’s _terrible_. I’ll have to dream up something truly nightmarish to sleep deprive you of your victory.” Pitch’s face split into a grin even as Sandy pressed both hands to his forehead, shaking his head sadly.

"How long have they been at this?" Jack whispered to Tooth, who clapped a hand over his mouth.

"Shhh! We absolutely can’t be found before we get to see them kiss!"

Jack carefully pulled her hand away from his mouth, shuffling a little deeper into the screening branches of the bush and lowering his voice. “You’re crazy, you know that?”

Tooth flashed him a brilliant grin, one with just a flicker of wickedness. “Oh yes. Absolutely _dental_.”

Both Pitch and Sandy whipped around at the sound of Jack’s groan.


	34. Chapter 34

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For [thismightyneed](thismightyneed.tumblr.com)'s superhero AU!

"How about the League of Justice?"

Bunny cuffed Jack in the shoulder just a little harder than a friendly punch required. “Justice League ring a bell, mate?”

 

"Okay, not that, then." Jack tapped his chin in exaggerated thought, then jumped halfway out of his seat, pointing at Tooth. "The Extraordinary Gentlemen!"

Tooth crossed her arms and glared, her wings flaring out. Jack’s smile faded out slowly. “And Woman?” he added weakly.

"Does not roll off tongue," North rumbled. "And besides, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen may sue for copyright infringement."

"Oh." Jack slumped back in his seat, lips curving downward into a pout. "Man, all the good names are taken."

"Not all." North waved both huge arms expansively, encompassing all five people at the tiny coffeeshop table with the gesture. "How about… _Guardians_?”

The other four silently contemplated this for a handful of seconds.

"Mmm, I don’t think so."

"No offense, mate, but that’s the worst one yet."

"Nobody’s gonna get it, North. Heck, _I_ don’t get it. Guardians of _what_?”

This time, it was North who folded his arms and pouted while the conversation flowed on around him.

“ _I_ think it should be something that tells everyone what we do, who we are, in just a couple words.”

"So do we all, Tooth, that’s why choosing the right name is so important."

"And so _hard_. Hey, what about the Super…uh…”

“ _No_ , Jack.”

"Hey, I didn’t even get to finish!"

"What about you, Sandy?"

Sandy’s head snapped up, and he shrugged, quickly signing that he hadn’t been listening. Bunny rolled his eyes, and Tooth gave a strained smile. “We’ve been talking about what to call the group for the last forty-five minutes. Don’t you have any ideas?”

Sandy shrugged again, hoping desperately that his nervousness wouldn’t show. He’d been lucky that Tooth had been distracted by the argument over names, but now that her full attention was on him, if she noticed what he’d been remembering - ! He’d never live it down.

“C’mon, you’ve got have _something_. Everybody else made one up.” Jack rocked back on the back legs of his chair, causing it to dip dangerously backwards. “You don’t want Pitch Black to make fun of us for not having a name _again_ next time he shows up, right?”

Sandy hoped fervently that the blush that coloured his round cheeks would be mistaken for embarrassment at their thorough drubbing at the villain’s hands just shy of a week ago. He could hear Pitch’s voice as clearly as if the shadowmancer stood right behind him, his dark-chocolate-and-wine voice dripping with malicious amusement.

 _"You haven’t even given your group a_ name _? And you call yourselves heroes. I could destroy the lot of you without so much as lifting a finger.” A quicksilver smirk, a jagged smile in a face like a knife. “You’re lucky I’m bored.”_

"So you _do_ remember.” Tooth’s triumphant grin snapped Sandy back to the moment. He bit the inside of his lip, trying to look appropriately angry as Tooth continued. “As if it wasn’t enough that he made us all look like fools, he had to make fun of us too? Ooo, when I get my hands on him again -“

Sandy tried not to recall the way a slender, elegant tendril of shadow had effortlessly grabbed Tooth from the sky mid-dive and flung her into Bunny so hard that they’d left a crater in the sidewalk, but it was too late. Tooth’s sixth sense had already picked up the memory, judging by the way her jaw suddenly clenched, and she rose without a word, turning on her heel and stalking silently towards the ladies’ room. It was a good thing she’d gone, Sandy decided. At least once she was out of range, no one else would be able to see how he’d admired the graceful movements of those shadows, their flawless coordination as they picked off the challengers one by one. It had been almost like watching a dance, and Sandy had to admit that he’d probably thrown the fight by letting himself get drawn into watching to the point where he didn’t even think to fight back. In the end, only Jack had even got a hit in, one lucky blast of ice tearing through Pitch’s defenses to scatter harmlessly off of his dark armour. Sandy absolutely wished that that armour had shattered under the blow for the right reasons, ones that involved thwarting Pitch’s bank heist and absolutely didn’t involve the lean, whipcord body that must be hiding underneath -

"Hey, is somebody’s phone going off?" Jack asked, as a sudden burst of bombastic music filled the air. North jumped up, his blue eyes wide with the Look that every one of the little group knew meant either they were about to be privy to a stroke of genius, or about to get up to their necks in something smelly.

"Aha! Alarm is working!" North yanked a little silver box from his bag, tossing it on the table with all the pride of a new parent. A blue light flickered out of the top, an image of the city’s famous tower forming in its rays, shadowy tentacles quickly climbing up its walls. "Trouble at Moonclipper Corp! Someone fetch Tooth, we are back in business!"

"Oh _nooooo_ ,” Bunny groaned, as Jack leapt up out of his chair and started down the hall towards the washrooms, yelling for Tooth. “North, my suit’s at the cleaner’s, maybe I should just -“

"Not to worry! You can borrow one of mine!"

Sandy slipped down from his high stool carefully, bobbing to a halt about a foot above the ground. He shut his eyes and called up his dreamsand, readying himself for a fight.

And he hoped, quietly, that none of the others would notice how excited he was for a chance to fight Pitch Black again.


	35. Chapter 35

Sandy loves all the strange star-stories: the ghosts of shattered ships that sail the endless black between the stars, striking against pirate and Golden Army vessels alike, shying only from the brightness of shooting stars; the dark stars that the sailors of the deep galaxy swear sing to them from the depths; the forgotten constellations on the fringes of the known universe, empty husks of long-abandoned manors, once the homes of the great and glittering, now home to nothing but the curious creatures that survive somehow in the freezing void. He’ll listen for hours as the sailors spin yarns about men they’ve known, men they’ve lost, lured away by the eerie calls of whatever lurks at the heart of the supermassive black hole in the center of the galaxy, ignoring the looks and the whispers of the other star pilots.

How can he explain that there is a wonder in these dark tales, a joy that echoes the delight and awe of the people whose wishes he grants? How can he make these lovers of the light understand the beauty in the dark, the thrill in the frightening unknown? He would compare it to the exhilarating feeling of tearing through the star-scoured abyss, speeding along on the edge of flying out of control, never knowing for sure what might lie ahead in the dark, but Sandy knows that he’s earned his reputation as a daredevil even amongst a people whom many of the Golden Age’s peoples find dangerously reckless. If they don’t already understand, then Sandy knows he has no way to show them.

It’s probably fitting, then, that he is the one to see the birth of the Nightmare King, to bear witness to the end of an age that worships light. And even as terror steals over him like the cold beyond the stars, even as the inky shadow of the black ship that will be only the first of many steals across his face, even as he begins to regret, at last, his wild desires to see the star-stories’ strangest for himself, Sandy can’t help but find himself drawn to the terrifying thrill that had run through him at the sight of the Nightmare King’s smile.


	36. Chapter 36

Sandy put his glass down on the bar with a soft clack and a sigh. “I shouldn’t have come.”

"Aw, come on, don’t be silly!" Jack reached over to pat Sandy on the back in a way that he probably thought was comforting, before spinning around on the tall stool to wink at their bartender who, Sandy had noticed, was putting on a pretty good show of being annoyed by Jack’s antics, but who smiled every time Jack turned his back. "I brought you out to have a great time, and a great time you will have. Hey! Can we get a couple more vodka shots here, please? We need to get my friend drunk enough to get up and dance."

The bartender rolled his eyes as he deftly poured out two shots, but Sandy didn’t miss the way his lips quirked upwards when Jack blew him a kiss. Sandy sighed, and downed his shot, making a face at the burn as he turned to face the crowded dancefloor and, hopefully, avoid having to watch Jack flirt. He did that enough on a usual day, he didn’t need to spend his first-ever visit to a gay bar just watching while Jack worked his magic on everyone in the bar.

A surge of guilt rushed through Sandy at the thought, and he gave himself a sharp mental scolding. Jack was only trying to help, in his own way; it wasn’t his fault that he was gorgeous and outgoing, while Sandy…wasn’t. Already Jack had made friends with half the bar, and by the way he was complimenting the bartender’s tattoos, it sounded like he’d be leaving with at least one number as well, while Sandy had been too intimidated to even get up to dance. He couldn’t quite seem to shake the feeling of being an intruder, an imposter, and much as he wished he could just imitate Jack’s easy charm, he hadn’t left his seat in all the time they’d been there.

And while Jack obviously thought he was helping by trying to get Sandy plastered, Sandy found he wasn’t feeling anything other than slightly sick. Not to mention that the music was too loud to hear himself think, and the pounding bass and strobing lights from the dancefloor were giving him a headache already. Why had he let Jack talk him into coming tonight, anyway? Maybe he would have enjoyed this if he’d been younger ( _or skinnier_ , a nasty thought whispered in the back of his head), but as it was, Sandy only wished he’d stayed at home. He could have been curled up on the couch right now with music playing that didn’t hurt his ears, with a glass of wine, finishing that book on Mucha he’d been reading -

Sandy’s train of thought abruptly leapt the tracks and skidded away as the door swung open to admit the most striking person Sandy had ever seen. The man was tall and slender, long-limbed to the point of gangling, but the way he moved turned whatever might have been awkward about his frame to fluid elegance. He wore black, sleek and understated and out of place amongst the glitter and colour of the crowd, and when he turned in the direction of the bar, Sandy saw that his dark hair framed an aquiline face with cheekbones that could cut glass.

Sandy swallowed, hard, and hoped that Jack was still distracted enough with the bartender that he hadn’t noticed. Then, the stranger in black started towards the bar, and Sandy promptly ceased to care about Jack at all.

"Evening," the man said, slipping onto the stool next to Sandy, and Sandy felt heat rise to his cheeks as he realised he’d been staring. He promptly turned all of his attention to his empty glass, willing himself to stop blushing. Ye gods and little fishes, the man’s voice was like silk and dark chocolate. His accent alone was going to give Sandy a heart attack. "Is that your friend monopolizing the bartender?"

 _Oh_. “Yes,” Sandy admitted, to the bottom of his glass.

The man made a soft noise that might have been a laugh. “Does he think he’ll get free drinks if he flirts shamelessly enough?”

"I don’t know," Sandy muttered. "You’d have to ask him yourself."

"Hm." The man leaned forward on the bar, folding his hands in front of him, and Sandy couldn’t help but watch his long pianist’s fingers twine together with a kind of helpless fascination. He wondered whether he could capture them in charcoal, or if he’d have to use pencils. Pencil would offer greater refinement, greater precision, but then they might turn out looking stiff and still and lose their easy grace of movement… "It might work for him, though, that bartender seems pretty infatuated. If I’d given free drinks to every pretty face, I wouldn’t have stayed a bartender long."

The dismissive tone in the man’s voice gave Sandy just enough courage to glance up at his face. Rather than staring at Jack, as Sandy had half-expected, the man was gazing thoughtfully at Sandy with a look that Sandy found he didn’t mind at all. Up close, the man’s cheekbones were even more remarkable, the dim light from the bar softening the harsh angles of his face even as the strobe lights threw them into stark relief, and Sandy’s fingers itched to try to capture them on paper. Charcoal, he decided to himself, unable to look away from the curiously grey eyes that had caught his. He would definitely have to use charcoal.

"…you’re a bartender?" Sandy managed, at last. The alcohol must have finally been getting to him, because his tongue felt thick and tangled in his mouth.

The slightest of smiles crossed the man’s face. “I was, for a while. Now I scrape by as a model for life drawing classes. Even when I pose naked, it feels less degrading than bartending did.” He shifted in his seat, unclasping and clasping his hands, and if Sandy didn’t know better, he’d almost say that this beautiful, confident being was _nervous_. “I’m Kosmo.”

"Sandy," Sandy replied. "It’s nice to meet you." _Very_ _nice_ , the little voice in the back of his head supplied, and if his smile was a little too wide, Kosmo didn’t seem to notice or to mind.

…

It was almost two hours (and several drinks) later when Sandy said, “You know, it’s a good thing you’re a life-drawing model.”

Kosmo stopped in the middle of his lecture on art nouveau versus art deco, his lovely, expressive hands arrested in mid-wave. “What do you mean?”

It was either the drink or the conversation that emboldened Sandy to say, “Because hopefully you’ve been around enough artists not to think it’s strange when I say you have the most beautiful bone structure I’ve ever seen and I’ve wanted to draw you ever since you walked in the door.”

Kosmo’s eyes went wide, and for a moment Sandy was certain he’d scared him, that Sandy shouldn’t have said anything at all. And then, Kosmo spoke, and the thrill of delight in his voice was more than enough to tell Sandy that his worries were unfounded. “Why don’t you?”

"Well, for one thing, it’s rather rude to draw strangers without their permission," Sandy answered, before admitting, "But it’s mostly because I don’t have anything to draw with. All of my materials are back at the studio."

Kosmo’s grin was not entirely innocent. “Then what are we doing hanging around here?”

…

The key stuck in the lock, as it always did, and Sandy mumbled a few curses on shoddy locksmithing as he wrestled it open. When the door finally gave, he pushed it open with a triumphant grin, beaming as he ushered Kosmo inside.

"This is nice," Kosmo commented, taking in the clutter of canvases and easels that ate up most of what little floor space there was. He crossed the room to the low, broken-springed old couch, settling gingerly onto it as though afraid it might break under the strain of doing its job. "The skylight is a good touch, you must get a lot of natural light that way. Do you want me here?"

Sandy had to bite back the list of dirty comments that lined up in his head. “That’s fine,” he answered, turning to the sink set in the low counter where he kept his kettle and mugs, sticking the kettle under the tap and letting it fill slowly as he tried to get his thoughts in order. By the time it was full, he was feeling more collected, enough to remember his manners. “Would you like something to drink? I’m afraid I’ve only got tea or tap water, although I do have three different blends of chamomile, and I think there are still a few bags of oolong some…where…”

His sentence trailed off into silence when he turned to see Kozmo, lying nonchalantly across the couch, bathed in silvery moonlight from the skylight above.

Completely naked.

This time, Kosmo’s smile was _definitely_ not innocent, and even the luminosity the moonlight lent to his face couldn’t make its lines look any less sharp. Sandy found his gaze dragged away from Kosmo’s face, though, by the lithe form arranged as though on display just for him, the way the moonlight turned Kosmo’s lean chest and spidery limbs to cut marble, the only colour remaining to prove he was a living creature the faint blush of pink staining his lips and his cheeks and his stirring cock.

"Is something wrong?" Kosmo asked, his voice light and teasing.

"No," Sandy squeaked, and then gave himself a good mental shake. A thought struck him, and he felt a slow and lazy smile spread across his face. "If you’d just drape your right arm a little higher over the back of the couch there - yes, just like that."

Kosmo’s smile turned to a frown of confusion, but he did as he was told, only to make an indignant sound when Sandy turned his back to open up the cabinet that held his drawing supplies. “What -“

Sandy spun round again, snagging an easel as he did so. “I thought you were a life model? You should know by now how to pose.”

"You really brought me here to draw me?" Kosmo said, sounding blindsided, as he started to get up from the couch. Sandy held out a hand, and he froze in place.

"Whatever else you might have in mind, I want to try to put your face on paper first." Sandy set his paper pad down on the easel, adjusting the height as he did so. "So find yourself a comfortable pose. And hold. _Still_.”

Kosmo licked his lips, an action that Sandy suspected would have looked equally pornographic even if he’d been fully clothed, and swallowed hard. Sandy watched the Adam’s apple bob in Kosmo’s delicate throat with a curious sense of deep, quiet exhilaration, and when Kosmo breathed, “Yes, sir,” Sandy had to pause to catch his breath.

"All right," he said, as Kosmo arranged himself back into his pose from before, giving Sandy a look that clearly asked for approval. Sandy nodded, and Kosmo let out a long, shuddering sigh that didn’t sound disappointed at all. He tipped his head back, exposing his throat, and caught Sandy’s eyes with his own.

Sandy bit his bottom lip, and scooped up a stick of charcoal.

…

Sandy was woken the next morning by the sound of ‘Ice Ice Baby’ blaring from his phone. He blinked blearily, and reached around Kosmo’s still-sleeping form to fish the device out of his bag.

The text from Jack read “told you you’d have a great time”. It was accompanied by a little winking emoticon.

Sandy groaned, and tossed the phone back into his bag.


	37. Chapter 37

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More vampire!Sandy.

The place was familiar by now, the sticky linoleum flooring and railings at waist-height along each of the neutral-coloured halls, the constant _ding_ of the call bell an insistent underscore to the unnatural hush, the stench of piss and disinfectant and slow, inevitable decay permeating the air. It had been difficult to force himself to come at first, but by now, it had become routine. Sandy could almost pretend, as he walked through the second set of sliding doors and the smell smacked him full in the face, that it didn’t bother him.

He nodded to the nurse behind the desk, who broke into a bright and practiced smile. “Here to see your father?” she asked, and Sandy managed not to flinch as he nodded again. The nurse’s smile turned a little more real as she pressed the button to unlock the doors separating the wing Sandy wanted from the rest of the building. “It’s so nice that he’s got such a devoted son. So many of our residents seldom get visitors. I’m sure he really appreciates seeing you so often.”

Sandy felt certain that his smile was a little pained, and he hurried through the door with only a brisk wave back at the nurse.

The door to the room at the end of the hall was half-shut. Sandy knocked, not wanting to interrupt a feeding or bathing, but the voice that called “Come in” didn’t belong to a nurse or orderly. No, this voice had been familiar to Sandy since long before the hospital, and though it had lost some of its surety and resonance with age, it was no less beguiling than the first time Sandy had heard it.

With some difficulty, Sandy forced a smile to his face, and gently swung the door open, uncertain of what might await him on the other side.

Pitch was seated by the window, staring out at the enclosed garden connected to the wing. The honeysuckle around his window was in full bloom, but Sandy barely noticed the bright firework flowers after Pitch turned to face him and smiled. His whole face lit up, and Sandy’s breath caught in his throat. If his heart could beat, he knew, it would be hammering now. For all that time had done its damage, the things that had first drawn Sandy in were still there, in the regal way Pitch held himself despite the deteriorating curve of his spine, in the way fine, papery skin stretched over familiar cheekbones, the way he folded those long legs even though they were, by now, all but useless.

"Come in, come in," Pitch beckoned, and the warmth in his voice was so familiar that for a moment, Sandy dared to think he might have caught Pitch on a good day. But then, the hesitation stretched too long, Pitch’s smile growing a little too thoughtful, and Sandy knew before he even said a word.

"I’m sorry, I don’t recall your name. Have we met?"

Sandy shored up his smile to cover his disappointment, crossing the room to take one of Pitch’s hands in his, feeling the fragile bones so near the surface. “Once. A very long time ago.”

Pitch’s smile turned to a pensive frown. “Then I should know your name. I wouldn’t have forgotten someone as radiant as you. No, I must not know you. But I feel like I should.”

"Do you?" Sandy asked, forcing himself to sound surprised, as though he’d never heard this before. "How strange. I feel the same way about you."

Seeing Pitch’s smile was like watching daylight break. “How fortunate, then, that we have this chance to get to know one another.”

"Fortunate," Sandy repeated, feeling hollow.

 _Fortunate indeed_ , he thought, later, as he waved goodbye, watching the light fade from Pitch’s smile with every step Sandy took away from him.

Inhuman memories were perfect.

Sandy wasn’t sure if it were more or less fortunate that human memories weren’t.


	38. Chapter 38

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More of [thismightyneed](thismightyneed.tumblr.com)'s superhero AU! ('Mother' refers to Mother Nature.)

"We have to go after him!"

"Jack, sit _down_! You can’t go _anywhere_ while you’re hurt like this.” Tooth tuts disapprovingly, softly pressing him back into the chair.

"Besides, we don’t even know where Pitch took him," Bunny says, his gruff voice and abrupt words a startling contrast to his gentle touch as he carefully cleans bits of twig and thorns from the deep gouge across Jack’s chest. "Hold _still_ , Frostbite. Squirmin’s only going to make this take longer.”

"We don’t have time for this!" Jack explodes, trying and failing to push Bunny away. "How can we just sit here and do nothing when Pitch has Sandy? Who knows what kind of horrible torture he’s putting poor Sandy through _right now_?”

…

”And this is the laboratory. Please, don’t touch any of the experiments in progress, but other than that, you’re free to do as you please.” Pitch gestures in at the state-of-the-art facilities nonchalantly, like he’s just showing Sandy another room in an average house, rather than a secret island lair dug into a dormant volcano. Sandy only gets a tantalizing glimpse of what looks like the Large Hadron Collider’s younger, more attractive cousin before Pitch shuts the door. Pitch starts down the obsidian tunnel that serves as a hallway at a pace that Sandy, on his shorter legs, has to struggle to match. “The kitchens are down this way a little farther, if you ever get hungry, there’s a gymnasium with shadows enspelled for combat if you feel like sparring, although I’ll warn you now that they’re not a patch on _me_ \- ah, and here are _your_ rooms.”

The door at the intersection of two hallways is huge and black and more than a little intimidating, and for a moment, Sandy feels a flicker of the fear that had overcome him when Pitch’s shadows had first swallowed him up.

Then Pitch waves a hand, and the door dissolves with the faintest of whispers, just on the edge of hearing. The room on the other side is enough to make Sandy’s jaw drop. It’s probably larger than the Guardians’ whole headquarters, even including North’s workshop. The massive pale-gold rug covering most of the black-marble floor is deep enough for Sandy’s feet to sink into up to his ankles, and the high, domed ceiling is dotted with flecks of mica, glittering like little golden stars. One whole wall opens out onto the side of the volcano in a huge balcony, and the view is spectacular, lush rainforest trailing down to a sea so blue that Sandy can hardly tell where the water ends and the sky begins.

"Impressive, isn’t it?" Pitch says, and only the slightest hint of uncertainty in his voice gives away the fact that he’s actually asking a question. "There’s an ensuite bathroom with a hot tub as well. Go ahead, look around. It’s all yours, for as long as you decide to stay."

Sandy turns away from considering the impossibly large bed (which, for some reason, is circular) instead facing Pitch with his best expression of deep skepticism. _Decide to_? he signs, and Pitch frowns.

"I’d noticed that you didn’t speak much during our battles. Don’t, or can’t?"

Sandy signs a _can’t_ and then, when Pitch’s frown doesn’t change, shakes his head and presses a hand to his throat. Pitch nods, finally showing signs of comprehension.

"Ah. I’m sorry. Mother had theorized that you might have some power linked to speech, something so destructive that you couldn’t use your voice freely. I’m afraid she’ll just have to deal with the disappointment."

Sandy can’t help the feeling that the ground has suddenly dropped away from beneath him. He signs _Mother?_ and then remembers that Pitch can’t understand him, scowls, and shrugs exaggeratedly instead, hoping that Pitch will get the message.

Thankfully, Pitch has the decency to look embarrassed. “Yes. Um.” For the first time since Sandy’s known him, Pitch actually seems uncomfortable. “In the interest of full disclosure, this wasn’t entirely my idea. Mother is very interested in you and your powers; she thinks that you seem sympathetic, and that what you can do could make you a good addition to our operations here.”

Sandy wonders when his heart turned into a lump of useless heavy lead in his chest. He nods, feeling his earlier thrill at being so willingly kidnapped fade, real-life worries intruding for the first time on his fantasy bubble. What must the other Guardians be thinking right now? And what would they do if they found out what was really going on?

"I’ve upset you," Pitch says, with a kind of softness that Sandy hasn’t heard in his voice before. Menacing would be familiar, Sandy’s used to hearing Pitch’s voice low and soft and threatening, or even seductive, but this sounds almost vulnerable. It’s strange enough to drag Sandy back out of his thoughts. He touches Pitch gently on the arm and, when Pitch looks down at him, shakes his head emphatically, putting on a smile that only feels a little forced.

"No, I have," Pitch repeats, but he doesn’t push Sandy away. Instead, he puts a hand over Sandy’s. "Sandy, I told you that this wasn’t _entirely_ my idea. The truth is, Mother _is_ interested in your powers. But if you’ve been paying attention at all, you should know by now that I’m also interested in you.” His grin is sudden and predatory and sends a shiver right down Sandy’s spine, a shiver that doesn’t seem at all unpleasant. “And not just for your powers.”

Sandy swallows, hard. The way Pitch is looking at him, the warmth of his hand on Sandy’s and the way his fingers curl almost possessively around it, makes Sandy’s knees feel seriously unstable. Pitch leans in, never breaking eye contact. “I hope you’ll decide to stay,” he purrs, and Sandy tries desperately and futilely not to blush.

There are a thousand things that Sandy’d like to say, but he knows that Pitch wouldn’t understand a word. So instead, he opts for a universal symbol.

He reaches up, on tiptoe, wraps both arms around Pitch’s neck, and presses their lips together.

The contact is electric. Every point where they touch seems to flare with heat, lips against lips, Pitch’s hands where they come up to grasp Sandy’s waist, Pitch’s lean figure pressing close against Sandy’s soft one. The kiss lasts only a few breathless moments before Pitch pulls back, but he doesn’t go far, only resting his forehead against Sandy’s as he draws in deep, gasping breaths. His eyes flutter closed, and for an instant, he looks almost innocent, overwhelmed, beautiful enough to make Sandy’s heart flutter in his chest.

Then his eyes snap open, their strange metallic grey piercing Sandy and holding him skewered in place under the intensity of their gaze.

"I think we should try that again," Pitch breathes, before diving in for another kiss.


	39. Chapter 39

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by [this post](http://marypsue.tumblr.com/post/98168509920/neferipitou-adds-we-just-caught-our-alternate).

"Should…should we interrupt them?"

Sandy, who had been studying the kissing human couple with his and Pitch’s faces with a look that Pitch found worryingly thoughtful, started visibly and blushed sunset orange, looking everywhere but at Pitch. Pitch had to repeat the question before Sandy, looking up as though he’d forgotten Pitch was even there, shook his head vigourously. _No_.

"But…" Pitch gestured towards the couple, only to stop and have to stare as the smaller and rounder of the pair broke away from his taller, more angular partner’s mouth and began to nibble at his earlobe, drawing a moan from the taller man that Pitch felt positively _filthy_ to be listening in on, unseen and uninvited. “I really think we should interrupt them,” he managed, at last, through the heat rising up his neck and along his cheeks, with a quick glance over at Sandy.

To his surprise, Sandy wasn’t watching the spectacle. Instead, the little dreamweaver was staring at a spot just to the left of Pitch’s face,  by Pitch’s ear, with a fascination a little too close to the way he’d watched the couple kissing for Pitch’s comfort. “Um, Sandy?”

Sandy bit his lower lip, his blush growing so bright that it actually cast a dim glow against Pitch’s bared chest and since when had Sandy been so close? Why had Pitch decided to wear this robe anyway, why had he thought it was such a good idea to have so much bare skin on display?

He didn’t notice the symbols that were flickering into life over Sandy’s head for several seconds.

"What? No, I am _not_ sensitive there!”


	40. Chapter 40

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A collection of prompts from the Blacksand Halloween Event on tumblr.

**Day 1: It Was a Dark and Stormy Night**

 

 _It was a dark and stormy night_ …

It is a wild night, the kind of night that blows the shadows tempest-tossed, the kind of night that howls down streets and sets fire-clad trees shivering, spilling their dying leaves onto the pavement below, the kind of night that crackles electric in the nostrils of every one who breathes it in, that sweeps in through open windows and opening doors, that leaks and whistles through the cracks in the walls and the spaces between beams, and wails in the vents, and strips the shingles from the roof. It is the kind of night that drives something before it, a wild and undirected fever-rush, that makes dogs howl in their cages and hearts rattle in ribcages, the kind of night that shoots lightning through every vein, the kind of night where thunder is a relief. It is the kind of night where savage delight falls instead of rain and the sky screams in colours not often seen in lightning.

It is the kind of night for cuddling up close to someone beloved, holding each other as an anchor against the untrammeled energy pouring from the sky to earth, using each and every body within range as a conduit. It is the kind of night where anything seems possible, for better or for worse. It is the kind of night where the cozy flames in the familiar fireplace seem to breathe, to move with a will of their own, to dance a strange, forgotten ritual as they spill heavy shadowy partners to their dance across all the walls and the ceiling.

It is a night for dreams – and nightmares.

 _It was a dark and stormy night_ …

They will be seen by none, tonight, this wild October night, with its wild October wind, coming straight out of the wild October countries, where a house might perhaps be found that holds a Family of night terrors and cold winds and memories that should never have been forgotten, countries where jack-o’-lanterns might grow on trees and lightning rod salesmen wander the roads ahead of such storms as this. This is an October straight from the old country, where things live that need not feed on belief, where things such as they exist whether believed or not, wanted or not. It has been a particularly fine one, so far; all of the dreams tasting of cornfields and apple cider, all of the moons fat and orange as pumpkins, all of the dreamers willing and terrified to see what is really there.

They only have a few more such nights left; there is already a shiver on the wind that comes not from either of them, not from the delights or the horrors of the October lands, and soon enough the glorious fire-crackling leaves underfoot will be laced with a fine filigree of silver, or locked away under ice, trapped in glass coffins until spring, never again to wake. There is already a bite of mint in amongst the pumpkin-pie dreams, a sharp crisp smell of December snow and February ice mingling with the autumn decay, already the glow of distant eyes in the dark is mingling with the ice-crystal-hazed shimmer of fairy lights strung against the long, long dark of winter.

But for now, there are dark and stormy nights, there are distant shrieks and the crackle of leaves underfoot, there are dreams that tang of bittersweet cider and pumpkin spice, there are nightmares with the warm dark glow of chocolate.

And there are kisses that taste of lightning and the wild, wild wind.

 

...

 

**Day 2: Under Your Bed**

 

There was something in the closet.

Akeela _knew_ there was, because it bumped and thumped and moaned and groaned when Mommy and Daddy went to bed. She’d gone and got Daddy up once already tonight, and he’d come into her room and patiently opened the closet door, looked behind her clothes, shown her there was nothing there. Then he’d shut the closet doors and plugged in the nightlight, and he’d tucked her in and kissed her goodnight, and then he’d left, turning out the light in the hallway as he went.

As soon as the door to Mommy and Daddy’s room had closed, the bumping and thumping had started again, this time mingled with snarling. And this time from under her bed.

Akeela pulled the covers up over her head and squeezed her eyes as tightly shut as she could, clinging to her stuffed bunny for dear life.

…

"How do you like that, Sandman? Your efforts to capture me have terrified that poor child more than my nightmares ever could!" Pitch hissed into Sandy’s ear. Of course, he didn’t have much of an option; wedged under the girl’s bed as they both were, it was impossible to find space to breathe, let alone to hold a normal conversation.

Sandy didn’t even try. Leaning forward slightly, he cut short Pitch’s tirade by pressing a slobbery, open-mouthed kiss to Pitch’s nose. Pitch sputtered, trying to brush off his nose, but he was thwarted by the dreamsand bonds holding his hands tied together in front of him. Sandy watched him struggle for a long moment, tracing the pretty muscles that stood out in his long neck, until Pitch gave up, panting with exertion.

"All right, fine, you win this time," he snarled, with a wicked grin in Sandy’s direction. "Can we at least take this out from under this damned bed?"

Sandy appeared to consider the request. Pitch was just starting to think that he might get off the hook - or, at least, out from this particularly tight space - when Sandy’s grin grew wicked enough to match his own. Pitch only had a split second to process before Sandy leaned in and blew a raspberry on Pitch’s exposed collarbone.

The resulting yell was enough to send the small girl in the bed above them running for her parents’ room. Sandy waved a hand, and a dreamsand manta ray winged its way out from under her bed, following her down the hall to where, Pitch had no doubt, it would put her and her parents soundly to sleep, so they wouldn’t return to interrupt.

"Why, you’re almost as devious as I am," Pitch commented gleefully, tugging at his bonds as he tried to press himself closer to the Sandman.

Sandy, for his part, just rolled his eyes, and set to the very serious task of making the Boogeyman scream.

 

...

 

**Day 3: Trick or Treat**

 

Sandy collapsed, exhausted, onto the enormous pillow he’d decided was going to be his bed tonight. After all, there was very little point to having a palace that constantly shifted shape if you kept the same furniture all the time. Not that he ever had much time to enjoy the furniture, or the palace; somewhere on the planet, it was always night, which meant that Sandy went where the sunset did, spreading his dreams in a neverending cycle.

Well, not quite neverending. Every so often, he did get a break. Like tonight, Halloween night for North America, a time when people _expected_ nightmares and scares and things to go bump in the night. They didn’t _want_ good dreams, or at least, they didn’t appreciate his hand-crafted fancies quite as much as they did on, say, cold nights in the dead heart of February or balmy summer evenings. So Sandy felt more than justified staying in, putting his feet up, turning all his furniture into giant pillows, and getting reacquainted with all the comforts of home, knowing that he wouldn’t be disturbed until the night was over.

So when the doorbell rang, he toppled right off his pillow.

Sandy ignored it at first, reasoning that if the Guardians needed him, they’d send out the aurora, and nothing else was important enough to disturb his well-earned night in. The second ring was louder, more insistent, and made him frown. Whoever was trying to get his attention was going to a _lot_ of trouble to do it, since Sandy was fairly sure he hadn’t given his palace a doorbell.

The third and fourth times the doorbell rang, he simply dissolved it, hoping it wouldn’t come back. The fifth and sixth times, he ground his teeth, and made it snap at the finger of the person pressing the button, someone he was increasingly certain wasn’t going to give up and go away.

On the seventh ring, Sandy rolled his eyes, and attempted to lever himself up from the pillow. When this proved futile, he snapped his fingers, and the pillow shrank to a more manageable size, lifting into the air in a shower of golden dust. He rode it like a magic carpet all the way to the front door, which, out of spite, he decided should be at the other end of the palace. Might as well make his unwelcome visitor wait just a little longer.

He flung open the door, a scowl already settling into place on his round face, and nearly fell off his pillow for the second time in one night.

Pitch Black loomed in the doorway, grinning like a jack-o’-lantern, and holding out…a pumpkin? A bright orange plastic pumpkin, Sandy realised in astonishment. What on -

"Trick or treat," Pitch said smoothly, and, while Sandy still felt his jaw hanging loose, leaned in and pressed a kiss to Sandy’s cheek.

It took Sandy longer than he’d like to admit to gather his wits enough to ask, _Was that the trick, or the treat_?

Pitch’s smile grew wider, his voice dropping to a purr. “Who says it can’t be both?”


	41. Chapter 41

It was scorching hot, over a hundred degrees if it was anything, without a cloud visible in the brilliant azure sky. The air itself seemed to sizzle, heat-haze shimmering around the horizon and clouds of choking dust drifting up from the road with each breath of hot wind. There hadn’t been a car driving past for nearly an hour.

Not for the first time, Pitch was starting to regret deciding to try to hitchhike to SXSW.

He raised a hand to shade his eyes and squinted along the length of the road, ignoring the faint layer of sweat over his forehead and trying to ignore the pounding heat on his shoulders, the glare that made it almost impossible to raise his eyes from his dusty boots. Something shimmered on the horizon that might have been headlights, or might just have been another mirage, desert heat glowing with illusory light. The longer he watched, the more sure he was that what he was seeing were the twin circles of headlights, but what they were attached to was...strange.

It took Pitch a moment to realise that what he was seeing shimmering in the sunlight, almost so bright it hurt to look at, was indeed a car. The reason why it was so difficult to look at was because...well.

It was gold.

It was long, and low, and beautiful, or would be beautiful, if it wasn’t painted a bright, metallic gold, glittering like a carnival ride. It was almost blinding as it sped down the road towards him, and Pitch was so busy gawking that he almost forgot to put out his thumb.

The gold car slammed on the brakes as soon as he did, screeching to a halt beside him and throwing up a cloud of dust that stung his eyes and clogged his lungs, forcing him into a coughing fit. When he finally opened his eyes, all he could see through the dust and the tears that blurred his vision was an open door and the faint outline of a small person in the driver’s seat, an impression of wild golden hair haloing their head.

Pitch didn’t stop to think twice, swinging his heavy backpack off of his shoulder and using the momentum from that movement to toss it into the passenger seat, following after it a moment later. He blinked furiously, rubbing at his eyes to try to clear them, as he pulled the door shut behind himself and sank blissfully into the cool dark of the air-conditioned vehicle. “Oh god, thank you for stopping.”

“You looked pretty fried,” a soft, amused voice replied, and Pitch froze, turning slowly to face the driver of the car. A face that he’d seen a million times, though only on TV or in magazines, never in person, smiled angelically back at him. “Why don’t you toss your pack into the back, and we’ll get on the road. Where are you headed?”

“You’re,” Pitch managed, his jaw working up and down as he tried to form words.

Sanderson Mansnoozie, better known by the name of his solo post-rock electronica act, The Sandman, beamed. “I am. And you’re?”

“...dreaming,” Pitch said dazedly, as he gently pitched his pack into the back and buckled himself in. “I’m dreaming.”

“Well, Dreaming, nice to meet you. Where are you headed?” Sanderson asked, as he threw the car back into gear. It gave a throaty purr that Pitch could feel rumbling up his legs and in his abdomen, leaping forward like a cheetah unleashed.

Pitch tried, without much success, to turn his brain back on. “The - the music festival,” he managed. It had to be his imagination that Sanderson was giving him an appreciative look as they tore down the highway. Had to be.

“What a coincidence! I’m playing there this weekend,” Sanderson said lightly, turning back to face the road. “If you’d like, I could take you all the way.”

Pitch swallowed, hard.


	42. Chapter 42

Jacqueline’s very certain that she’s not supposed to be doing this. No _respectable_ young lady would be out this long after dark, unescorted, and _certainly_ not in search of a scary story that anyone her age ought not to put any credence in. But here she is, anyway, making her way on tiptoe  to the small clearing where, they say, if you find it right on the stroke of midnight, you might be able to catch the witches at work.

 

The woods are very dark, branches with thick fans of needles blotting out the moonlight and dappling the carpet of moss and needles underfoot with patches of silver. Every so often, Jacqueline catches sight of something shifting in her peripheral vision, but when she turns to look there’s never anything there, just the occasional shaking branch or even just the silent, velvet dark. Everything looks stranger after dark, the trees black and forbidding, the moonlight shifting on the ground making it seem as though she’s walking on water, and though in the daylight the stories all sound a little bit childish, a little bit silly, the night makes them all terrifyingly real.

Jacqueline’s just beginning to wonder if she’s still going in the right direction - it’s hard to tell in the dark whether she’s passed any of the landmarks or not - when she hears the voice. It’s almost as dark as the night air around her, and yet there’s something enchanting in it, something that has Jacqueline darting forwards without looking. She’s found them.

Unfortunately, her moment of triumph lasts only a second, before she trips over something in her path and falls headlong onto the ground.

The voice stops abruptly at the sound of Jacqueline’s landing, the involuntary ‘oof’ that rips itself from her lungs, and she presses her forehead into the soft soil of the path, drawing in breath after breath of the slightly-musty, earthy scent of fallen leaves and the accumulated life of the undergrowth, hoping feverishly that the witches won’t come and find her. No one knows exactly what it is that they do, out here under the moonlight, at a time when only evil spirits and those who consort with them dare to leave their homes, but they must have earned the name of _witch_ somehow.

And yet, when that midnight voice asks, from somewhere very near, “Are you all right?” Jacqueline looks up and cannot find it in her to think badly of the two women who stand over her.

“Um,” Jacqueline manages, taking them both in. One is tall, almost impossibly so, and dark as the night under the canopy of trees; the other is short and rather squat and has a smile that seems to know many secrets, and her wild hair is golden as honey. “I - yes, I’m - are you -” She doesn’t have the guts to come right out and ask it, but the two women meet each others’ eyes, the small one’s smile growing wider and the faintest hint of a smirk crossing the dark one’s angular face.

“Witches?” the dark woman asks, and the word sounds mocking coming from her mouth. Jacqueline feels her face flush, and she pulls herself up into a sitting position.

“I didn’t mean -”

“Why do you want to know?” the dark woman asks, and the blonde crouches down so that her wide brown eyes are level with Jacqueline’s own. Looking into that dreamy gaze, Jacqueline feels more calm, more at peace, than she thinks she’s ever felt in her life, and the words tumble out unbidden.

“I want to know what you know.”

Both of them fix her with assessing eyes, until Jacqueline feels like she’s shrinking under their gazes. Finally, they break off their scrutiny of Jacqueline, turning to face each other instead. Somehow, Jacqueline’s sure a silent conversation passes between them as they stare, until at last the blonde nods her head, and the dark one nods hers, and they turn back to Jacqueline with eerily identical smiles on their faces.

“Well, since you asked so _nicely_ ,” the dark one says, her voice faintly mocking.

She raises one arm, and the moonlight-dappled forest goes dark.


	43. Chapter 43

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A sequel of sorts to chapter 20.

The trees close in overhead, dark and menacing, the arches of abandoned cathedrals and catacomb vaults concealing stars that Jack knows must hover somewhere overhead. Here, though, under the canopy of the impenetrable trees, no starlight reaches the mossy, leaf-carpeted ground, the smiling face of the moon blotted out by reaching branches and rattling leaves. The horses’ hooves make no sound on the overgrown path, and even the clank of their equipment sounds muffled and dull in the hush.

He risks a glance around at the others, and sees, with a curious sense of relief, that they all seem as unsettled as he feels. Anna’s hands are both resting on the hilts of her sabers, her fingers twitching as though they itch to draw the twin swords and turn them against an enemy; Aster’s eyes are restless, flickering from tree to tree, and he turns to stare down the dark path behind them so regularly that Jack finds he can time each glance to the beat of his heart. Only North seems unconcerned, spurring Petrov along every time the horse shies at seemingly nothing in the gloom, a small smile on his face that Jack recognises from the last hunt, when they brought down both those giants. Anna and Aster have both told him that their leader always smiles in the heat of battle or in anticipation of it, and it’s only added to the admiration Jack already feels, and the gnawing doubt that he belongs here, with them, at all. If he’d really been fast and sneaky enough to be useful to their band of monster hunters, then North wouldn’t have been able to catch Jack picking his pocket in the first place, now, would he?

There’s a sharp _snap_ of a branch from the front of the train, punching through the fog of thoughts surrounding Jack’s head, and his hand is on his dagger before he can even see what’s happened. Petrov has stopped, and will not move despite all of North’s urging. Instead, the horse stands like a statue with his ears flat against his head and his eyes wide and rolling, staring in obvious terror towards something on the path ahead. Jack squints, but he can see nothing in the dimness, only the jagged shapes of bare branches and, faintly, through the branches, the glitter of stars. It takes Jack only a few seconds to remember that he couldn’t see the stars overhead, but in those few seconds, the starry lights on the path ahead have already condensed into a faintly luminous shape, its golden glow a graveyard glimmer only bright enough to make the darker, looming shape beside it seem black as a hole cut directly through the world into the void beyond.

Jack can’t tell which shape the voice that cuts through the quiet belongs to, but the strangest feeling tells him it is the dark one.

“Turn back.”

North kicks Petrov’s sides one more time, makes a frustrated noise when the horse only takes a step backwards, and slips down from his back. “You would be the witches of this wood? There is bounty on your heads, gold enough to make all of us here rich as kings. Why would we turn back?”

The voice, when it comes again, sets Jack’s bones shaking and teeth chattering in his skull. It seems to come up from the ground, not loud but _everywhere_ , and the trees groan and sway with it until he fears the entire forest will fall down around their ears.

“Turn back _now_.”


	44. Chapter 44

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For [whentheoceanmetsky](http://whentheoceanmetsky.tumblr.com/)'s [Incubus AU](http://whentheoceanmetsky.tumblr.com/tagged/incubus-au).

_“What would you give in exchange for her life?”_

_Kozmotis lets out a long breath, and raises his eyes to meet the ones he can feel burning into him. Literally, burning. Looking into the demon’s eyes is like staring into the scorching sun, all the heat of the summer droughts concentrated into a dispassionate gaze, boiling him slowly away to nothing._

_He doesn’t look away._

_The word comes out a sigh, a shuddering breath. “Anything.”_

_The demon’s laughter is the crackle of locust bodies underfoot and the pop of sparks, and it sears into Kozmotis’ skin like drops of hot oil spat from a cooking fire. “Everything,” it says, its voice the low buzz of flies and the hiss of vipers and the echo of the Pit, its breath heavy with the putrid stench of rotting meat, enough to make Kozmotis want to gag. He tries to hold his breath, hold his place, don’t sway, don’t falter, don’t give any sign that this might be costing him. For her._

_“Everything,” he agrees. His voice, traitor that it is, doesn’t fail him._

_The demon grins, crescent-moon, sickle-sharp, and there are knives of ice digging into Kozmotis’ skull, clawed hands holding him fast (though he wouldn’t move if he could, even if his limbs were no longer frozen in something so far beyond fear that it’s almost unrecognizable) as those eyes, burning into his own like coals, like brands, draw ever closer._

_“To seal the bargain,” the demon says, its buzzing, hissing voice heavy with wicked delight, and then there are rasping, scorching lips on Kozmotis’, stinging pain as lacerating fangs bite down and blood spills, hot and thick and fast, down his chin. This close, he can taste the foulness of the demon’s breath, nearly chokes on it as it sears like a desert wind down his throat. A sob shakes him when the searing doesn’t stop, pouring through his limbs, pooling in his chest like a lake of fire, burning away the dark behind his eyelids, scouring him out from inside with claws of flame. Skin cracks like a drying lakebed, revealing molten lines etched darkly into flesh. Blood drips, hisses and steams where it hits the ground. His screams go unheard, smothered in the mockery of a kiss._

_And the burning doesn’t stop -_

A thunderous pounding on the door tears Kozmotis out of a too-familiar dream and back to the present. He lets out a heartfelt groan as he pushes himself out of bed, ignoring the splintering sounds coming from the door as he materializes clothes, long sleeves and gloves to cover the binding symbols and unholy words still inscribed over most of his body, military-styled as befits his rank, tight pants and elegant lines because, after all, he _is_ still an incubus. As he has been since the day he’d bartered away his soul, his entire existence, for his daughter’s life. Not something he thinks about often anymore, that. It’s the damn dream, messing with his head, putting him out of sorts.

The door gives way with a final crunch and Kozmotis manages only with great difficulty not to roll his eyes at the flaming bulk of the lesser demon that steps over the wreckage. “What?” he snaps, and the creature gives him an all-too-delighted grin.

“Your brother’s causing trouble again.”

Kozmotis gives in to the urge to roll his eyes, heaving a long-suffering sigh. “Of course he is,” he groans, rubbing the bridge of his nose in a vain attempt to ward off the headache he knows he’ll have by the end of the day, if not sooner. “Tell me he hasn’t seduced the leaders of two opposing countries into a threesome _again_. Last time that happened, I had to have thirteen people assassinated and the war was _still_ four months behind schedule.“

“Abaddon’s furious,” the lesser demon agrees, sounding entirely too pleased about Kozmotis’ predicament. “Says if you can’t keep him in line -”

“You don’t have to finish that sentence, I can fill in the absurd, physically improbable threat myself, thank you.” With a snap of his fingers, the door picks itself up from where it lies in splinters on the floor and reassembles itself, settling onto its hinges with a soft sigh. “Where is Pitch now?”

…

Pitch, as it turns out, is standing in the kitchen of a small apartment, clean but shabby, wearing a threadbare robe that might once have been red but is now a faded, dusty pink, and holding a frying pan in which sizzle three perfectly round pancakes. Kozmotis waves a gloved hand to clear away the sulphurous smoke from his arrival – it smells awful and the stink clings to his hair for days, but if there’s a chance of being seen by a mortal, it’s worth it to make a proper entrance – and scowls at his brother, for lack of a better word. “What are you _doing_?”

Pitch doesn’t turn around, vaguely waving the frying pan in answer.

“I can _see_ you’re making pancakes. _Why_ are you making pancakes?”

“Sandy likes pancakes.”

“Sandy?” Kozmotis takes a moment to look around at the apartment he’s found himself in. It’s tiny – the kitchen is little more than a hallway with a fridge in it – and all the appliances show signs of long use, but the cracked paint is a cheerful, buttery yellow and there are flowers on the sill of the tiny window. “I’m going to ask, even though I know I won’t like the answer. What, or who, is _Sandy_?”

Pitch doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t have to, because it’s then that a door slams and someone who can only be Sandy walks into the kitchen. He’s small, and round, with hair the same dark gold as a summer sunset, tousled like he’s only just rolled out of bed, framing warm, sleepy brown eyes, an upturned button of a nose, and a lazy grin of complete worldly satisfaction.

Kozmotis’ mouth goes dry.

“Oh,” he says, and Pitch grins.

“ _Oh_ ,” he repeats, because suddenly he understands _exactly_ why Pitch is making pancakes, in a mortal’s apartment, in a frankly hideous robe.

Said mortal turns those warm, heavy-lidded eyes on Kozmotis, not frightened in the slightest, only confused. He turns to Pitch and gestures towards Kozmotis with a shrug, as though to ask who the stranger in his kitchen is. Pitch frowns, with a sideways glance towards Kozmotis.

“Him? He’s just my brother. Ignore him, that’s what I always do.” With a flick of his wrist, Pitch deftly flips all three pancakes out of the frying pan and onto a chipped plate, leaving Kozmotis to wonder just how long he’s been practicing. “Pancakes are ready, if you’ll grab the syrup.”

Kozmotis gives Pitch a glare, but Pitch doesn’t seem to notice, only his smirk giving him away as he serenely pours more batter into the frying pan.

“Please excuse Pitch’s absolute lack of manners,” Kozmotis says, turning back to Sandy, and _oh_ , the late-morning sunlight has caught in Sandy’s hair and turned it to a halo of brilliance, and Morningstar below Kozmotis is in _so. much. trouble_. “I am Kozmotis, General of the Legions of the Damned, Fiend of the Nine Circles of Torment, and _you_ must be Sandy.”

Sandy blushes almost exactly like a ripe peach, Kozmotis notices with a kind of dazed wonder, all gentle, rosy shades colouring perfect, plump cheeks, reminding him of how long it’s been since he last enjoyed the taste of real fruit, the feel of taut skin breaking under his teeth, the rich, hedonistic rush of juice over his tongue –

He clasps both hands behind his back in an attempt to smother the temptation to reach out and stroke Sandy’s cheek, smiles, and hopes he doesn’t twitch. Pitch’s smug grin isn’t exactly helping.

Sandy, still blushing, reaches up and makes a few intricate gestures in the air in front of him, and Kozmotis frowns.

“You can’t speak?”

Sandy shakes his head, and Kozmotis hadn’t realized it was even _possible_ for him to blush any harder.

“Would you like to?”

The look Sandy gives him is equal parts derisive and suspicious.

Pitch narrows his eyes, pointing the pancake flipper at Kozmotis. It would be threatening, if he weren’t still wearing a ratty pink robe and the flipper weren’t a flipper. “Oh no you don’t. You aren’t just going to waltz in here and throw around your stupid powers like the great big showoff you are. It’s not going to work, anyway.”

Kozmotis blinks, thrown off for a moment, before a slight frown creases his brow. “What do you mean, it’s not going to work? I’ve done this a thousand times, and I definitely have enough power for -”

"Oh, please, we both know you’re not that dumb.” Pitch jabs the flipper into Kozmotis’ chest, smearing a tiny bit of pancake batter across the pristine black of his jacket. Kozmotis stares at it for a moment, affronted, before carefully flicking it away.

His voice is frosty. “ _Please,_ elaborate.”

“I mean you’re not going to impress Sandy with your _thoughtfulness_ and your _power_ and steal him out from under my nose!” A snarl twists Pitch’s face, and he advances on Kozmotis, still wielding the flipper like a rapier. “I’ve finally got something _good_ going for me, and you are _not_ going to mess it up this time!”

Kozmotis opens and closes his mouth, knowing that he must look like a startled trout but unable to care. “You - _I_ mess things up?”

“ _Yes_.” The word is a hiss, as Pitch tucks the flipper under Kozmotis’ jaw and uses it to push his chin up. “What, you think it’s _easy_ , being your shadow? Being the _bad copy_? Your _mistake_? And now that I _finally_ have something that doesn’t depend on _you_ , you just _have_ to come stick your abnormally large nose in where it isn’t welcome.” He gives a little jab with the flipper, stepping closer so that he’s glaring directly into Kozmotis’ eyes. “So yes. You mess things up. But you _won’t - this - time_.”

They stand, glaring each other down, until small hands suddenly reach up, take hold of the backs of their heads, and smack their foreheads together. Kozmotis stumbles backwards, wincing and clutching his forehead, listening to Pitch cursing a blue streak. “ _Ow_ , Sandy, what was that for?”

Sandy’s hands fly in a complicated tangle of expressions, and Kozmotis, his head still ringing, tries not to stare at the scowl that causes his lower lip to jut out adorably as he, presumably, scolds Pitch.

“What? No, you don’t know him, Sandy, you don’t know what he’s like! He _always_ does this! No, I think I know my own brother a little better than you do!”

Sandy’s hands spell out something else, and Pitch pouts. “Yes, I _do_. What? _No!_ Absolutely not! We are not - are you listening to me?”

Kozmotis swallows hard as Sandy turns to him, giving a weak smile. “Please, allow me to offer my apologies -”

Sandy shakes his head, pressing a hand to his forehead with a silent sigh. He points to the plate of pancakes, and then to the tiny, square kitchen table, ending with a hopeful look.

Pitch’s eternal scowl seems to grow darker when Kozmotis looks up and meets his eyes. “He says sit down, have breakfast with us, and we’ll talk about it.”


	45. Chapter 45

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A (very short) sequel of sorts to Chapter 27.

Sandy is afraid, at first, when they’re told that they’re to be married to the Golden General to seal the treaty, but their fears are not realised; Kozmotis is strange to look upon, but not unpleasant, and his good eye, though sad, is kind.

Sandy’s other fears are not realised either; Kozmotis is as kind as his good eye, and it takes Sandy almost too long to realise that it isn’t only kindness and respect that leads Kozmotis to avoid undressing in Sandy’s presence.

They’re halfway back into the heart of the Constellar Empire before Sandy has a chance to do anything about it; they catch his face between both small hands and meet both his eyes, the one that glints gold with intelligence and grief and the one that glows milky white, and place a soft kiss to the jagged black scar that slashes down across it, hoping that even though their language is a barrier, Kozmotis will understand what they’re trying to say.


	46. Chapter 46

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For ROTG Fave Ship Week on tumblr. Prompt #1: Soulmates

Sandy knows what the marks are right away.

“They’re soul marks!” they gush, pressing two warm fingers against the inside of Cosmo’s wrist. Sandy’s always run hot, but there’s something about the press of their peach-soft fingers on the sensitive skin inside Cosmo’s arm that sends a shiver skittering down Cosmo’s spine. “When you find the person with one that matches yours, you’ve found your soulmate!”

They sound so excited, drawing their fingers over the faded-tattoo-blue lines scribbled across the veins on the inside of Cosmo’s pale wrist. 

“Are you sure?” Cosmo asks, eyeing the henna-coloured swirls on the side of Sandy’s neck. If it weren’t for the fact that Sandy has them too, he would have chalked them up to marker doodles that hadn’t quite washed off.

“Oh, definitely,” Sandy says. “I read about it on WebMD.”

…

Cosmo catches himself staring in the middle of band practice, drumming away automatically as he watches Sandy’s cheeks puff out with air and their fingers fly over the keys. He never would’ve thought that Sandy would pick trumpet as their instrument, but then, Sandy’s always been full of surprises.

The mark on Sandy’s neck is a beautiful mandala, a series of abstracted curves and whorls like an enormous fingerprint, a labyrinth that Cosmo could meditate on all afternoon if it weren’t for the fact that he misses a major tempo change in the seventeenth bar and the whole band grinds to a halt in a series of squeaks and squawks.

“Is there something more important than pacing the  _entire band_ , Mr. Pitchiner?” Mr. Shalazar asks, and half the band turns around to stare. Ana stifles a giggle behind her hand, and Cosmo feels his ears burn.

He sneaks a look at his own, scribbly mark under the black-and-white-striped fingerless glove he’s wearing over his left arm while Mr. Shalazar is busy trying to get the flutes in tune (and get Jack to stop shooting spitballs out of his flute at Aster). His mark is jagged, like teeth, like a reading of a heartbeat.

Nothing like Sandy’s.

…

There’s a crowd gathered around Sandy’s table at lunch, Sandy proudly holding court as they tell everyone about soul marks in general and theirs in particular. Nick is at one of their elbows, interrupting every few minutes with what’s either meant to be encouragement or a segue into one of Nick’s own stories, Cosmo can’t tell. Ana’s sitting at Sandy’s other elbow, Aster beside her with his feet on the table trying to look like he isn’t interested. Jack looks a little too invested. He looks up once from staring at the mark on Sandy’s neck and catches Cosmo’s eye, before quickly looking away and pretending to be really interested in the carton of milk on his lunch tray.

Cosmo takes his bag lunch and heads for the library.

He finds the WebMD article Sandy was talking about and precious little else. There’s several blogs by people who claim to have ‘soul marks’, some of whom sound more…rational than others, but no major medical institutions seem to have anything to say on the matter.

Cosmo finishes his sandwich, ignoring Ms. Goossen’s sharp look, and logs off the computer. He spends the rest of lunch in the boys’ room, furiously scrubbing at the inside of his wrist.

…

“Won’t it be awesome to meet our soulmates?”

Cosmo manages a neutral grunt of acknowledgment. “Mmh.”

“I wonder what they’ll be like. Do you think they’ll have personalities like ours, or do you think they’ll be more complementary? I wonder what happens if your soulmate isn’t a gender you’re attracted to. Do you think they have to be romantic? Maybe they’re just like the best friend you’ll ever have. What if your soulmate was the same age as your dad?”

“Hnf.”

“I don’t know how we’d even find them in the first place. It’s really rare for somebody to be marked. What if they don’t have a mark? Does it have to appear in pairs? Can you have more than one soulmate? What if -”

It takes Cosmo, staring up at the trees that line the street leading away from the high school, a long moment to clock that Sandy’s stopped talking and is staring at him. “Hm?”

Sandy’s honey-brown eyes narrow, almost imperceptibly. “Why’re you hiding it?”

Cosmo automatically tugs down the sleeves of his black hoodie, tucking his thumbs into the holes worn into the cuffs. “Hiding what?”

“Your  _soul mark_ , silly.”

Cosmo makes a face. “I don’t want to look at it. You said it yourself, they’re really rare. We’ll probably never even meet them.”

Sandy lets out a long breath, and stuffs their hands in their pockets. 

“You don’t have to be such a killjoy,” they say, their voice suddenly muted, and Cosmo’s chest snarls into a knot.

“Sorry. Guess you’ll just have to hang out with all your shiny happy new best friends until your real soulmate comes along,” he snaps. He doesn’t wait for Sandy to answer, just peels away from them and out into the street, not bothering to look both ways before jogging across to the other side.

The turn for Cosmo’s house isn’t for another block. He walks the rest of it in time with Sandy, on the other side of the street, in glowering silence.

…

Sandy goes to the 7-Eleven with Jack and Ana for lunch the next day. Cosmo eats his cafeteria hot dog at the table in the corner by the window where the ants keep getting in, and tries not to sulk.

…

Cosmo wakes up at the sound of shattering. It’s one AM and there’s a rock lying on his bedroom carpet, right beside the stain from the nail polish remover, in the middle of a glittering circle of glass.

“What the fuck,” he hisses out the window at Sandy, down in the backyard, who at least has the decency to look ashamed.

“They make throwing pebbles at windows to wake people up look so much easier in the movies,” Sandy whisper-shouts back, hands cupped around their generous mouth.

“My parents are gonna take this out of my allowance!”

“Sorry!”

Cosmo pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “What’re you doing here, anyway? I thought you weren’t talking to me.”

“I thought  _you_  weren’t talking to  _me_!”

“Well, here I am, talking to you!” Cosmo bites down on his tongue. “What are you doing here at one in the morning?”

Sandy takes a deep breath, lets it out in a sigh. “It’s henna.”

Cosmo blinks. It’s too early for this. “What, your hair?”

In answer, Sandy twitches aside the collar of their animal-face hoodie (Cosmo still isn’t sure what kind of animal it’s meant to be, but the ears attached to the hood look very cute on Sandy). Their mark is hard to see from this angle, but Cosmo gets the point.

“What? Why?”

Sandy shrugs. “I know what you having one and me not having one means. I guess I was jealous? And maybe I wanted to make you jealous?” They shuffle their head down into the collar of their hoodie with another forlorn shrug. Their voice is muffled when they add, “I hope you’ll be really happy with your soulmate.”

Cosmo has to close his eyes for a second.

“Sandy,” he says, “I don’t have a soul mark.”

Sandy’s head whips up, pure, adorable confusion spilling across their face. “Wait, then what -”

“It scrubbed off. Not much, but some. Remember that sleepover we had last weekend? Where I fell asleep first and you tried to write all over me with Sharpie?”

Somewhere towards downtown, a police siren Dopplers through the night, a chorus of barking dogs marking its passage.

“Well, now I feel silly,” Sandy says. Cosmo thinks they’re about to say something more, but that’s when the hall light clicks on, shining yellow all around his closed door.

“Cosmo? You’ve got class in the morning, go to bed!”

“See you tomorrow?” Cosmo calls down, and Sandy waves one hand up at his window before turning and running for the fence. They get stuck about halfway over, but only for a minute or two.

…

Sandy meets Cosmo at the corner the next morning, on their way to school. They don’t say anything as they fall into step beside Cosmo, just smile. Cosmo smiles back.

“You know,” he says, “when you turn eighteen, you should totally get that thing tattooed on your neck.”

Sandy smiles a little wider.

“Only if you get a matching one,” they say, leaning over to bump their shoulder into Cosmo’s arm.


End file.
